Santa Clara, CA Trash & Recycling: Recycling Rules (2026)

275, "Mandatory recycling," requires every responsible party of a residential property to subscribe to and maintain recycling service for each individual household in the dwelling; the only exception is a City Manager or designee finding that a property lacks sufficient storage space for the containers. Commercial business properties face the same mandate once they generate four or more cubic yards of refuse a week, though a business is treated as already subscribing if its collector routes its containers through a material recovery facility for mixed waste processing instead of a separate recycling stream.

Subsection (c) bars collectors from providing garbage service at all to a covered commercial property unless the collector also provides a recycling program with at least a 32-gallon container collected a minimum of once a week, with three narrow outs: mixed-waste processing at a material recovery facility, verified use of a different recycling provider, or a documented City Manager exception. Subsection (d) makes it unlawful to put garbage in a container designated for source-separated or single-stream recycling or composting, and subsection (e) requires all new construction and remodels of residential and commercial structures to be designed with adequate storage for separate garbage, recycling and organic waste containers.

280, which makes it unlawful for any nondesignated hauler to remove recyclable material set out for a City program and makes recyclable material set out at the curb the property of the City's authorized collector.