Rules

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

The ones that catch people here are the tires behind the shed and the unlabelled jug on the top shelf of the barn.

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 out here is where the money and the headaches both 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.

Worth knowing: if you live in the city and pay the water bill, furniture and appliances are already exempt at the landfill. For a couple of items that is the better route.

Construction and remodel 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.

This is the main thing a container is for here, because it is not on the City's exempt list and it is more volume than a pickup handles.

Masonry, concrete, caliche and rock

All fine, all extremely heavy. Slab, footings, brick, block, pavers, mortar, caliche and rock 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. Tell us squares and layers.

Yard and storm debris

Brush, branches, prunings, stumps and root balls all go in, at any size. Mesquite too, though cut it shorter than feels necessary.

What is prohibited

• Liquids of any kind — paint, stains, solvents, thinners, oils and fuels
• Batteries of every kind, lithium especially — a real fire risk in a loaded container and on a tipping floor
• Propane, welding 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, herbicides and agricultural chemicals — and there is a great deal of this in a Hale County machine shed
• Ammunition
• Contaminated soil
• Fluorescent tubes and older ballasts
• ⚠️ Tires — see below, because the local limit matters
• Caliche, soil and rock in quantity without telling us — extremely heavy

⚠️ Tires and the ten-a-day limit

Its own section, because almost every property out here has some.

Tires cannot go in the container, and the local route is capped: the landfill limits drop-offs to ten per person per day.

So a shed with thirty tires behind it is three days of trips, or a conversation with the City about something better. Implement and tractor tires are worse again — large, heavy, awkward, and frequently full of water or sand.

Deal with them before the container arrives. Loading around a pile of tires and then discovering they are not going anywhere is a bad afternoon.

⚠️ Agricultural chemicals

The other thing this market produces that most do not.

Pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer, bulk fuel, hydraulic fluid and solvents turn up in quantity in machine sheds, barns and well houses — often decades old, sometimes with the labels gone entirely.

• None of it goes in a container.
• An unlabelled jug has to be treated as unknown, which means asking rather than guessing.
• Do not pour anything out — not on the ground, not down a drain, and certainly not anywhere near a well head.
• Clear these first, before boxes get stacked in front of the shelf they are on.

The local good news: the landfill recycles all oil and filters brought to it, and the Recycling Center at 1018 E. Fourth Street takes used motor oil and antifreeze. For the rest, ask the City where it should go.

The routes for everything else

• Household garbage — the City's weekly residential collection, on one of three routes.
• Cardboard — the City's cardboard route, Mondays and Thursdays.
• Recycling — the Recycling Center, 1018 E. Fourth Street, Monday to Friday 8 to 5, closed noon to one. No glass. Recycle carts free to local businesses.
• Furniture, appliances, brush and yard waste — exempt at the landfill on a City of Plainview water bill, with ID and the statement.
• Oil, filters and metal — recycled at the landfill; oil and antifreeze also at the Recycling Center.
• Tires — the landfill, ten per person per day.
• Scrap metal — positive value and its own route. Pull it out.
• Asbestos — a licensed abatement contractor, never a container.
• Hazardous material — ask the City. Never a container, never a drain.

Treated timber and fence wire

A distinction that costs people money on nearly every outdoor project here.

Clean untreated wood and brush is one thing. Treated timber is another entirely — pressure-treated lumber, painted or stained wood, laminated products and anything with a finish. Essentially all exterior wood out here is treated, so a "wood" load from a fence demolition is almost never a clean wood load.

Landscape ties are the same story: heavily treated, very heavy, and never yard waste.

And specific to this country: old fence wire. There is a great deal of it, it fouls processing equipment, and it is worth pulling out as scrap because it has value. Same for irrigation pipe — metal pipe is scrap, PVC is not.

⚠️ Caliche, soil and rock

The single most common source of an unexpected charge.

Caliche sits close to the surface across this whole region, and it is dense. So is soil, and so is the rock that comes out of any excavation.

• 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.
• Root balls carry a lot of soil — knock it off where you can before loading.
• Contaminated soil is prohibited outright — a different thing from clean fill.
• A 10 yard part filled is the right answer, and it will look half empty when it is done.

Before the container arrives, walk the garage, the shed and every outbuilding: find the chemicals, the batteries, the cylinders, the tires and anything holding refrigerant, and set them aside. Once a couch is on top of a fuel can, nobody is finding it.