State Rules

What Minnesota Will Not Let You Throw Away

Three layers of rules govern your container here. This is the one that applies whichever county you are standing in.

Three layers, not one

A container in Rochester is governed from three directions, and it helps to keep them separate:

• The county decides where your waste may go — it may not leave Olmsted County — and licenses who may carry it.
• The facility decides what fits — the waste-to-energy size rule and its exclusions.
• The state decides what may be disposed of at all. That is this article, and unlike the other two it applies identically at every address in Minnesota.

So when we serve Kasson or Pine Island or Lake City, the county rules change but this layer does not.

Yard waste: banned statewide

The oldest and broadest of Minnesota's bans, and the one that catches homeowners most often.

Note how much that covers. It is not just the autumn leaf pile. A hedge you took out, the branches from a storm, the sod from a bed you reshaped, the shrub stumps from a landscaping job — all yard waste, all banned.

It has to be composted or taken to a yard waste facility instead. Olmsted County runs a compost site for exactly this, though ⚠️ it cannot accept brush and branches, which is a distinction worth checking before you load the trailer. And keep plastic out of yard waste loads entirely — it does not break down and contaminates the finished compost.

For us, the practical rule is simple: tell us if there is yard waste, and keep it out of a mixed container. A landscaping job and a remodel need different arrangements.

Televisions and appliances

Two statutory bans that come straight out of ordinary clear-outs:

Televisions and video display devices

Banned from Minnesota landfills by statute — every cathode ray tube set and every flat panel. Computer monitors go the same way. It applies to households and businesses alike, and it is one of the firmest rules in the state's system.

Major appliances

Also banned: washers, dryers, refrigerators, freezers, stoves, water heaters, air conditioners, dehumidifiers.

⚠️ Around here there is a second reason, on top of the state ban: appliances are not accepted at the waste-to-energy facility either. They are mostly metal, they do not burn, and they damage equipment. So there is no version of this where an old chest freezer belongs in your container.

Both have easy routes. The Recycling Center takes appliances, computers and televisions for a fee in household quantities, and many retailers take old units on delivery of a new one.

⭐ The recycling rule is unusually strict

This one surprises people who have dealt with waste in other states.

Disposal is permitted only if a request is made to the state and nobody is willing to take the material. Such requests are rare and all options have to be exhausted first.

What it means in practice: separating your recyclables is not a gesture that a hauler can quietly undo. Once you have sorted the cardboard out, it is cardboard for recycling, and it stays that way.

It also means the Recycling Center's free lane is genuinely free when material is pre-sorted — aluminum cans, glass bottles and jars, clean corrugated cardboard, paper, plastics #1, #2 and #5, tin and steel cans, and clean scrap iron, aluminum, copper, brass and stainless. The sorting is the price.

⚠️ Batteries, and the fire risk

Most batteries may not go in the trash, and this is the one we would most like people to take seriously — not for regulatory reasons but for safety ones.

They are now in everything: phones, laptops, tablets, cordless tools, e-bikes, scooters, vacuum cleaners, children's toys. A damaged or crushed cell can ignite without warning, and a container is exactly the environment that crushes things.

• Lithium and rechargeable batteries — Hazardous Waste Facility, free, or a retailer that takes them.
• Automotive and button batteries — Hazardous Waste Facility.
• Single-use alkaline batteries may go in household trash.
• ⚠️ Lithium-based batteries above 300 watt-hours are not accepted at the Hazardous Waste Facility on safety grounds — large e-bike and scooter packs need a specialist route, so call first.

If you are clearing a garage or a workshop, batteries are the first thing to look for, not the last.

Paint, and the free route

Good news, and widely under-used.

Minnesota participates in PaintCare, and both latex and oil-based paint can be dropped free at participating retailers. The Hazardous Waste Facility takes paint too, along with stains, varnishes and solvents.

Liquids of any kind never go in a container. Not a part tin, not "it's nearly empty", not dried-out-ish. A basement clear-out in a house of any age usually produces a surprising amount of this, and it all has a free route.

Fluorescent lamps and mercury

Fluorescent tubes and compact fluorescent bulbs contain mercury and may not go in the garbage. Neither may mercury thermostats or thermometers, which turn up constantly in older houses here.

All of them go to the Hazardous Waste Facility, free for residents. Tubes break easily in a container, which is precisely the problem — a broken tube releases what the rule exists to contain.

Where each thing actually goes

• Yard waste — compost site, not a mixed container (⚠️ no brush or branches there)
• Televisions, monitors, computers — Recycling Center, for a fee
• Appliances — Recycling Center, or a retailer on delivery
• Scrap metal — Recycling Center; clean metal is free and it has value
• ⚠️ Batteries — Hazardous Waste Facility, free (alkaline may go in the trash)
• Paint, stains, solvents — PaintCare retailers or the Hazardous Waste Facility
• Fluorescent lamps, mercury devices — Hazardous Waste Facility
• Mattresses and tires — Recycling Center, eight or fewer per day
• Concrete, masonry, untreated timber — Kalmar Landfill, kept separate
• Everything else that burns and fits — the container