Craven County, NC Trash & Recycling: Recycling Rules (2026)

of 11-21-2011) governs how residents and hand commercial establishments handle recyclables in the county's unincorporated area. Section 32-27 defines recyclable solid waste material broadly to include newspaper, aluminum cans and foil, PETE and HDPE plastics, glass containers, corrugated cardboard, and steel cans, and defines a scavenger as anyone who enters a convenience center or recycling container to examine or remove items left there. Section 32-30 turns that definition into a flat ban: no one may enter a curbside recycling container or a staffed convenience center to rummage through it for scavenging, except to make an authorized drop-off of solid waste or recyclables.

Section 32-32 backs the ban with a property rule: once recyclable material is set out curbside in a recycling container, it belongs to Craven County or the third party the county has granted a recycling franchise, not to the resident who put it out or to a passerby who wants to take it. The same Article II definitions apply to convenience centers under § 32-31, where only private citizens (people disposing of their own waste without pay) can use the drop-off sites, and the site operator has final say over what can be left there.

Craven-Pamlico Animal Services and the Sheriff's Office are not the enforcing agencies here; solid waste and recycling rules fall to the county's Solid Waste and Recycling division and the Board of Commissioners, which adopted the current Article II by ordinance on November 21, 2011, replacing an older collection-focused article.