Petaluma, CA Trash & Recycling: Yard Waste Collection (2026)

030, part of the original garbage and rubbish disposal chapter (Ord. 343 NCS), set the operative rules for yard debris pickup by the city's garbage collector. Garden trimmings, defined to include lawn cuttings, dead plants and similar small cuttings, must be removed by the garbage collector once deposited in a box or carton sized to hold them, placed on the planting strip or within five feet of the street right-of-way, with an alley exception that puts them near the garbage and rubbish can instead. Tree trimmings get a stricter dimensional limit: branches can't exceed two inches in diameter or five feet in length, and must be firmly tied and bound together before being set out in the same planting-strip or right-of-way location, with the same alley exception.

18 handles separately. Residents whose yard debris runs oversized branches, unbound cuttings, or piles left outside the five-foot right-of-way zone risk having the collector decline pickup, since the sections describe exactly what the collector is obligated to remove and how it must be presented.