Local Rules

Nobody Collects Your Garbage Here. You Hire Someone.

Newcomers wait for a city truck that is never coming. The arrangement here is yours to make, and it changes what you should expect.

The thing newcomers get wrong

People who move to Sioux Falls from almost anywhere else spend their first fortnight waiting for something that is never going to arrive.

This is genuinely unusual. Most cities of this size run collection themselves or contract a single company for the whole city. Here it is an open market, and the practical consequence is that your neighbour may be on a different hauler, a different day and a different price to you.

What the City actually does

Plenty, but none of it involves a truck at your curb.

• Licenses the haulers. Chapter 57 of the city ordinances requires a license to collect solid waste commercially, sets minimum design and capacity requirements for vehicles and containers, requires unit permits and inspections, and requires proof of insurance.
• Publishes the list. The City maintains a list of licensed waste hauling companies so you can see who is legitimately operating.
• Runs the landfill. The Sioux Falls Regional Sanitary Landfill is a City facility — roughly 789 permitted acres spanning Minnehaha, Turner and Lincoln Counties.
• Runs the Household Hazardous Waste Facility, free to residents of the five-county region.
• Sets the rules everyone has to follow, including mandatory recycling and the yard waste separation requirements.

So the City is the regulator and the destination, not the collector. Once you see it that way the rest of the system makes sense.

⚠️ What this means in practice

Four consequences worth knowing before you need them.

1. Nobody is coming unless you have arranged it. If you have just moved in and no hauler has your address, your bin is not getting emptied. There is no default.

2. Price and service vary, and you can change. This is a competitive market. Rates, container sizes, recycling arrangements and yard waste options differ between companies, and you are free to switch.

3. Yard waste is usually a separate service and a separate fee. It is not automatically included. If you want curbside yard waste collection you have to ask for it, and some haulers let you suspend it over winter.

4. Your collection day is a hauler question, not a city question. Including holiday schedules. There is no single city-wide calendar.

One thing is not negotiable regardless of who you hire: ordinance § 57.052 makes operating a private landfill unlawful. Waste goes to a permitted facility. There is no informal option on your own land.

Questions worth asking a hauler

If you are choosing or switching, these are the ones that actually matter:

• Are you licensed with the City? It is a requirement, and the City publishes the list.
• What is included — trash, recycling, or both? Recycling is mandatory, so this is not optional, but how it is provided varies.
• Do you offer yard waste collection, and what does it add? Separate service, separate fee.
• Can I suspend yard waste in winter? Some will, some will not.
• What container sizes do you offer?
• What happens on holiday weeks?
• What will you NOT take? The important one — see below.

Recycling is mandatory, not optional

Sioux Falls has a mandatory recycling ordinance under the same chapter, and it is not limited to houses — it covers multifamily buildings too. The stated purpose is to extend the life of the Regional Sanitary Landfill, which is a City asset with a finite remaining capacity.

Two practical notes. First, if you are a landlord or manage a building, recycling provision is your responsibility rather than something tenants arrange individually. Second, recycling well genuinely reduces what you need a container for — on a clear-out, pulling cardboard, glass and cans out first can change the size you book.

⚠️ Where every hauler stops

Whoever you pick, the boundaries are the same, because they come from the ordinances and from what the landfill will accept.

• Construction and demolition debris is not household garbage. Drywall, timber, cabinetry, flooring, roofing, windows and siding are a different stream and no residential route takes them.
• Yard waste may not be placed with trash or recycling, at all, and limbs must be kept separate from grass and leaves.
• Hazardous material goes to the Household Hazardous Waste Facility — free for residents of the five-county region, and closed to businesses, farms, churches, schools and non-profits.
• Electronics are not accepted at the landfill and must go to the HHW Facility instead.
• Volume. A weekly cart is sized for a week's household waste. A basement, a garage or a renovation is not a week's household waste.

Where a container fits

We would rather you used your hauler and the free facilities than paid us unnecessarily. A roll-off earns its place when:

• The material is construction or demolition debris, which has no residential route at all.
• The volume is a clear-out rather than a week's waste — a basement, a garage, a whole house.
• You are a business, a farm, a church or a school, all of which are shut out of the free household facilities entirely.
• The job is on a schedule — a closing date, a turnover, family visiting for one week.
• The yard work involves root balls, stumps or trunk sections, which the free seasonal sites will not take.
• You are outside the city in Renner, Crooks or unincorporated county, where private arrangement is the only arrangement.

A short checklist

• New to town? Arrange a hauler — nothing happens by default
• Check they are licensed with the City
• Confirm whether recycling is included and how
• Ask separately about yard waste and what it adds
• Ask whether you can suspend yard waste over winter
• Get the holiday schedule from the hauler, not the City
• Remember construction debris is not on any residential route
• Hazardous material and electronics go to the HHW Facility, not the landfill
• Businesses and farms are excluded from the free household facilities
• Call us when the volume or the material stops fitting a cart