Port St. Lucie, FL Trash & Recycling: Recycling Rules (2026)

Section 80.06(c) of the Solid Waste chapter governs how residential recycling works at curbside. Residents who want to recycle have to do it through the franchise hauler unless they donate materials directly to a qualified 501(c)(3) charity or deliver them themselves, other than by curbside pickup, to a commercial recycling center for payment. The director, not the resident, decides which materials the hauler actually picks up, and recyclables can only go out at curbside on the schedule the franchise agreement sets, except around holidays or when the director says otherwise. Materials have to be kept separate from garbage and other refuse and set out in the recycling cart the hauler supplies, which Section 80.02 defines as a heavy-duty, roughly 100-gallon wheeled cart with a hinged, tight-fitting lid.

General set-out timing applies too: recyclables and other collection materials go to curbside no earlier than 6:00 p.m. the night before pickup and no later than 7:00 a.m. on collection day, and an empty cart has to come back off the curb by midnight of the collection day under Section 80.14(o). Once a recycling cart is at the curb, Section 80.06(c)(5) makes it unlawful for anyone, resident or scavenger, to collect, pick up, or remove the recyclable material without the city's prior approval, a rule the city enforces to keep the franchise hauler's revenue stream from recyclable materials intact. Multi-family residents who get curbside service follow the same rules under Section 80.07; those served by a mechanical container instead put recyclables in a separate recycling container at the complex rather than curbside carts.