Local Rules
Dearborn Requires Recycling AND Composting — From Everyone
Most cities encourage recycling. Dearborn's ordinance requires it — and requires yard waste composting too, from properties of any size.
What the ordinance actually says
Plenty of cities run recycling programs and hope people use them. Dearborn's is written as a requirement.
Two things there are worth pulling apart. The first is that composting is mandatory too — not just recycling. Yard waste is a required separate stream, not an optional convenience.
The second is the phrase "site of generation", which is doing a lot of work.
"Site of generation" is broader than it sounds
A site of generation is simply anywhere waste is produced. Not "households". Not "properties over a certain size". Anywhere.
That means the obligation reaches:
- Single-family homes
- Apartment and multifamily properties of any size
- Rental houses
- Commercial premises
The "any size" part is the unusual bit. A lot of mandatory-recycling laws elsewhere carry a threshold — five units, ten units, a certain number of employees. Dearborn's ordinance is written around the site rather than around a threshold, so a two-flat is in scope on the same basis as a two-hundred-unit complex.
Landlords and multifamily properties
Worth its own section, because this is where the obligation most often goes unnoticed.
If you own or manage a rental property in Dearborn, the ordinance names owners, lessees and occupants. You cannot discharge it by putting a single trash dumpster in the parking area and leaving the rest to tenants.
What that means practically:
- Provide separate, approved containers for recycling and for yard waste, not just trash.
- Tell tenants how the streams work, in whatever languages your tenants actually read. Dearborn is a city where that matters more than most.
- Keep the set-out rules — approved containers, correct placement, correct days.
- Handle turnover debris separately. A move-out clear-out is not household recycling and will not fit in either stream.
That last point is where we usually come in. Turnover debris is bulky, arrives all at once and is often part construction material — none of which the mandated streams are built for.
The yard waste rules in detail
The composting side has specific, checkable rules, and they are easy to fall foul of by accident.
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Container | Paper yard waste bags, or personal 20–32 gallon containers |
| Sticker | Containers must clearly display a City of Dearborn yard waste sticker |
| Weight | Bags and containers must weigh less than 35 pounds |
| Weekly limit | 20 combined bags, containers or bundles of brush |
| Placement | On the property easement — never in the street |
| Season | Collected seasonally, roughly March to mid-December |
| Stickers | Free from the Administrative Center, any Dearborn library branch, or the DPW Yard |
Free stickers are worth knowing about — people buy containers and then leave them out unstickered, which gets them left behind. Call 313-943-2150 if you cannot get to a pick-up point.
The 35 pound limit is the one that catches people. Wet leaves and soil-heavy root balls reach it quickly, and a bag that splits when it is lifted is a bag that does not get collected.
The seasonal point matters too: collection is not year-round. Work done outside the season has to wait or go another way.
Never in the street
Small rule, disproportionate consequences, and worth saying on its own.
Containers and bags go on the property easement — the strip between the sidewalk and the road. Never in the street itself.
Material in the roadway blocks drainage, obstructs sweepers and plows, and is a hazard for cyclists and drivers. In a city with real winter weather, a pile in the street ahead of a snow event is a genuine problem rather than a technicality.
The county layer above it
Dearborn's ordinance does not exist in isolation. Wayne County Solid Waste Ordinance No. 2004-787 and the county's Solid Waste Management Plan require municipalities to operate recycling and composting programs, and to report annually how much material is recycled and composted.
So the City has a reporting obligation upward as well as an enforcement one downward, which is part of why the rules are written as requirements rather than encouragement.
Michigan's own solid waste framework sits above that again — Part 115 of the state's environmental statute was substantially rewritten in 2023 and pushed counties toward materials-management planning. For most people reading this, the county and city rules are the ones that actually bite.
Where a container fits
A roll-off is not a substitute for your recycling or your yard waste stream, and we would not suggest otherwise. It is for the volume those streams were never sized for:
- Tree removal. One mature tree is many weeks of a 20-bag limit.
- Whole-garden clearance, especially on a property that has been let go.
- Storm damage, which arrives all at once and does not wait for the season.
- Work outside the collection season — roughly mid-December to March.
- Landscape rebuilds, which mix green waste with soil, old timber and hardscape.
- Rental turnover debris, which is neither recycling nor yard waste.
One practical note: if you book a container for green waste, keep it clean. A load of pure brush and prunings has a route that the same load with fence panels and plastic pots mixed in does not.
What this does not change
- Construction material is still excluded from the curb and the DPW Yard entirely. Covered here.
- Treated timber is not yard waste. Fence posts, deck boards and landscape ties are treated, and nearly all exterior wood on a property is.
- Soil is not yard waste. Shake root balls out where you can.
- Bulk items have their own limits — five a week, twenty a year. Detail here.
- Paint and chemicals go to Wayne County, never into any City stream.
Ordinances and schedules change, and this is a summary rather than the code. Everything above applies to the City of Dearborn. Dearborn Heights, Melvindale, Allen Park and the rest each have their own separate rules. For your own obligations, and particularly if you manage rental property, confirm current requirements with the City.
Need a container in Dearborn?
Call and describe the job. Three minutes on the phone gets you a size recommendation, a flat rate and a delivery window — and we will tell you if a smaller, cheaper container is the right answer.
Call (734) 292-8396