James City County, VA Trash & Recycling: Yard Waste Collection (2026)

The county has no curbside yard-waste or brush collection program; section 10-31 only authorizes an optional curbside recycling service for standard residential recyclable material like glass, plastic, metal, and paper, which specifically excludes yard waste. That leaves the fire prevention code's open-burning rule under section 9-3(2)(b) as the operative local rule for disposing of leaves, brush, grass, scrub vegetation, and twigs, all of which section 9-2 defines as yard waste. Burning yard waste is prohibited everywhere in the county except land zoned A-1, General Agriculture, and even inside A-1 zoning it remains banned in platted subdivisions, other than family subdivisions, and in manufactured home parks.

Where burning is allowed, the code caps the pile at five feet by five feet by five feet, a hard ceiling on volume rather than a permit-based limit. The county does carve out yard-waste burning tied to farming activities and to permitted forest-management or agricultural practices, provided the burn follows Virginia Department of Environmental Quality open-burning regulations. Separately, land-clearing debris, defined as waste from removing stumps, logs, trees, or brush ahead of a permitted building or land-disturbing project, is banned countywide unless the fire official issues a permit, and any permitted land-clearing burn must sit at least 1,000 feet from an occupied dwelling or commercial building outside the county's primary service area, or 2,000 feet inside it, unless the fire official reduces that distance with the affected owner's written permission.

Both yard-waste and land-clearing burning are also subject to the code's general hazardous-conditions authority, letting the fire official order any burn extinguished regardless of zoning or permit status when weather or local conditions make it dangerous.