Rules

What Can and Cannot Go in a Dumpster: The Local List

Almost everything we cannot take has a free county route. The ones that catch people are the shed chemicals and the decorative rock.

The short version

If it came out of a building, a yard or a household and it is solid, non-hazardous and not under pressure, it can almost certainly go in the container. If it is liquid, toxic, pressurised or contains refrigerant, it cannot.

That covers about ninety-five percent of questions. The rest of this is the other five percent, which is where the money and the headaches live.

What you can put in

Household and furniture

Sofas, armchairs, bed frames, mattresses, tables, wardrobes, bookcases, desks, carpet and underlay, rugs, window coverings, toys, books, paperwork, kitchenware, patio furniture, grills with the propane tank removed, exercise equipment and general clutter.

This matters more here than in some markets, because the City can will not take anything set beside it — a clear-out has no curbside overflow route at all.

Construction and renovation debris

Drywall, timber, plywood and sheet goods, doors, windows, trim, kitchen cabinets, countertops, tiling, laminate and vinyl flooring, insulation, siding, soffit, fascia, guttering and fencing.

None of this is allowed in the City can — construction material is excluded as a category rather than limited by volume.

Masonry, concrete and rock

All fine, all extremely heavy. Slab, footings, brick, block, pavers, mortar, decorative rock and boulders belong in a 10 yard, part-filled, and kept clean — clean masonry has its own cheaper route.

Roofing

Composition shingle, felt and underlayment, flashing and decking. Weight is the constraint, not acceptability.

Green waste

Brush, branches, prunings, stumps and root balls all go in. Since the greenwaste program closed permanently it is priced as ordinary waste by weight, so cut trees down before loading.

What is prohibited

• Liquids of any kind — paint, stains, solvents, thinners, oils, fuels and pool chemicals
• Batteries of every kind, lithium especially — a real fire risk in a loaded container and on a tipping floor
• Propane, gas and pressurised cylinders, including "empty" ones, and aerosols
• Refrigerant-charged equipment that has not been professionally evacuated
• Asbestos-containing material — never a container
• Medical and infectious waste, including sharps
• Pesticides and herbicides — and there is more of this in a Utah garden shed than people remember
• Ammunition
• Contaminated soil
• Fluorescent tubes and older ballasts
• Tires
• Dirt, sod and rock in quantity without telling us — extremely heavy

⚠️ Electronics cost more than you think

Not prohibited, but worth its own section because the economics changed.

Televisions and monitors are heavy and bulky. In a basement or office clear-out they turn up in real quantity, and paying landfill tonnage for a stack of old CRTs is the worst of both worlds.

Before you default to the container, check whether a retailer take-back scheme or a county e-waste event is running. It is usually worth the trip.

The routes for everything else

• Household garbage, within the limits — your weekly Draper City can, lid closed, nothing beside it.
• Recycling — bi-weekly City can: flattened cardboard, bottles and jugs with a neck, metal cans. All other plastic is trash.
• Glass — drop-off only, at Draper City Hall on Pioneer Road (green dumpster, southeast side, 24/7) or at IKEA.
• Hazardous material — the county Household Hazardous Waste Collection Center, free for Salt Lake County residents. Also taken at the Salt Lake Valley and Trans-Jordan landfills.
• Yard trash — City can at two-foot limb lengths, or a container for anything beyond that.
• Scrap metal — positive value and its own route.
• Asbestos — a licensed abatement contractor, never a container.

And a general point worth knowing: it is illegal to abandon hazardous material or pour it into gutters, storm drains or waterways, with both civil and criminal penalties attached. In a valley where the storm drains run to the Jordan River and eventually to the lake, that is not an abstract rule.

Treated timber and landscape ties

Worth its own section, because it costs people money on almost every outdoor project.

Clean untreated wood and brush is one thing. Treated timber does not belong in the same load — pressure-treated lumber, painted or stained wood, laminated products and anything with a finish. In this climate essentially all exterior wood is treated, so a "wood" container from a deck or fence demolition is almost never a clean wood container.

Landscape ties are the local version of this problem. Extremely common in gardens across this valley, heavily treated, and very heavy. Container job, never a yard waste one.

Tell us which kind of wood you have. Mixing them turns the cheap load into the expensive one.

⚠️ Soil, sod and rock

The single most common source of an unexpected charge in this market.

Landscaping here means gravel, decorative rock, boulders and sod, and a xeriscape conversion — very common work — produces an enormous amount of exactly that material.

• It is as heavy as building material gets. A 10 yard part-filled with rock hits its weight allowance while it still looks half empty.
• Tell us at booking. It changes the container we bring and the price we quote.
• Keep it separate. Clean fill has a different route from mixed waste.
• Contaminated soil is prohibited outright — that is a different thing from clean fill.

A pre-load checklist

• Walk the garage, shed and basement and pull every chemical before anything else moves
• Check specifically for pesticides and herbicides — every garden shed here has some
• Check for batteries: power tools, garden equipment, emergency lights
• Pull out propane cylinders and aerosols, including "empty" ones
• Set the glass aside for the City Hall drop-off — free, and heavy
• Think twice about electronics — e-waste recycling is suspended and tonnage is expensive
• Check for a second fridge or freezer as well as the obvious one
• Drain anything holding liquid, including the water heater
• Put tires aside — they are not accepted
• Decide whether your wood is clean or treated — and keep them apart
• Landscape ties go in the container, not the yard waste
• Tell us about soil, sod or rock before we bring the container
• Pull the scrap metal — it has real value
• In a pre-1980 house, test before you tear out insulation, tile or textured ceilings
• Load flat and heavy first, light material low, and stop at the rail