Chapel Hill, NC Trash & Recycling: Yard Waste Collection (2026)

Section 8-24.1 requires yard waste to stay separate from other solid waste set out for residential collection. Residents who want the town to collect brush, limbs, twigs, shrub or hedge clippings must bundle it securely, with each bundle weighing no more than 50 pounds, no longer than four feet, and no more than 24 inches in diameter, sized so one person can carry it, and set it behind the existing curbline (or off the pavement between the roadside ditch and the front property line where no curb exists).

Loose brush piles are allowed at the curb only up to three cubic yards; anything larger is left for the resident or property owner to remove unless the town arranges a special pickup under its adopted fee schedule. Companion section § 8-24.3 tightens the rules further: grass, leaves and pine straw are never picked up loose and must go in a rigid yard-waste container; trees, logs, stumps and land-clearing debris are the contractor's or owner's responsibility, not the town's; plastic bags are not acceptable yard-waste containers; and curbside yard-waste service is limited to residential customers, excluding institutional, business, commercial and industrial accounts.

Christmas trees may be collected once tinsel, nails, screws, wire and metal frames are stripped off, and wreaths may go out once free of wire and other nonvegetative material. Enforcement of the yard-waste program sits with the town manager and is supervised by the public works director under § 8-45; material set out that does not meet these standards will not be collected and is subject to the town's enforcement provisions, including the graduated civil-penalty schedule in § 8-44 for violations of § 8-24.1.