Grays Harbor County, WA Trash & Recycling: Yard Waste Collection (2026)

Grays Harbor County Code Section 8.12.070 provides that no person shall deposit, discard, or otherwise dispose of brush, yard, or garden waste, or any other type of landscaping waste, upon any land, public or private, within Grays Harbor County, unless the person has permission of the property owners or occupant to so dispose of the waste. The section then sets the condition for permitted disposal: such disposal of the waste shall be in an orderly manner for the purpose of composting or burning, and shall not cause a public nuisance or be in violation of any other state or local law, rules, or regulations.

In practice this means a resident cannot simply haul brush or lawn clippings onto a neighboring vacant lot, a road right-of-way, or county land without that owner's consent, even if the intent is to let it decompose; and even where the landowner has agreed, the waste still has to be piled in an orderly manner for composting or burning rather than scattered or left to rot into a nuisance. Burning yard waste remains subject to whatever separate state and local burn-permit rules apply, since Section 8.12.070 only removes the litter-dumping violation, not any fire-code or air-quality requirement.

The section sits inside the county's litter control ordinance, Chapter 8.12, so violations are treated the same as any other unlawful dumping and are enforced by the solid waste enforcement technician or code compliance specialist under Section 8.12.120, who may investigate and, with the owner's permission, enter the property to remove improperly dumped yard waste under Section 8.12.150.