Craven County, NC Trash & Recycling: Yard Waste Collection (2026)

Section 32-163 of the Craven County Code defines yard waste as any accumulation of long grass, shrubbery or vine cuttings or clippings, dry leaf rakings, tree branches, tree limbs, parts of trees, bushes, or other vegetation debris, and folds that definition into the broader term litter that Article IV regulates. Under § 32-164(1), the county's general ban on depositing litter into drains, streets, lots, and waterways carries an explicit carve-out for yard waste: the subsection states that nothing in the dumping ban prevents the depositing of household garbage or yard waste upon a person's own property.

Residents who want their yard debris collected rather than kept on site can bring it to a staffed convenience center, which § 32-165(e) lists as accepting leaves and limbs alongside solid waste, white and brown goods, lead-acid batteries, waste oil, cardboard, mixed paper, and rinsed pesticide and agrichemical containers, with convenience centers named as the only authorized disposal sites for those materials. Yard waste left at the curb in a cart or bag for a franchisee still falls under the same sticker-and-weight system that governs other solid waste under § 32-129, since Article IV's definition of solid waste in § 32-163 folds yard waste into the material the county's solid waste management program handles.

Anyone who dumps yard debris on someone else's property or into a ditch or waterway, rather than keeping it on their own land or hauling it to a convenience center, falls back under the § 32-164(1) general prohibition and its penalties.