Can neighbor dispose of trash next door?

Can you put your trash in a trash can on property not your own?

There are times when the desire to get rid of household trash doesn’t match up to when it is picked up in your neighborhood. And the thought of having that trash in a bin in the house or bagged up in the garage isn’t appealing.

A reader we’re calling Lee found himself in just such a situation. Lee was planning to take a vacation two days before the trash was scheduled to be picked up in his neighborhood. He knows that there is a regulation against putting out his barrels before 5 p.m. the night before trash is to be picked up. But after 5 p.m. the night before pickup he will be away with his family, so he won’t be able to put out the trash cans.

Lee also knows that trash is picked up a couple of days earlier on a street a few blocks away from him. He wants to know if it would be wrong for him to put his trash into a bin someone has pulled to the curb a few blocks over for pickup.

 

I am not a lawyer nor am I steeped in the details of trash regulations where Lee or even where I live. But I do know that in many municipalities, it is illegal for anyone to dump their trash into someone else’s trash receptacle without permission.

Do people engage in such behavior anyway? Yes. Is it OK for them to do so? No. Neither is it OK to drive around looking for a construction site that happens to have a dumpster on it and to toss your trash there without permission. Or to dump it in a receptacle up at the local park.

But is it wrong to put trash in a trash can on property not your own? Most regulations hold that it is wrong only if you don’t have permission from the owner of the receiving bins.

Lee has some options. He can ask a resident on the street with earlier pickup if he could place a bag of trash in one of their cans. That might be something Lee doesn’t want to do if he doesn’t know anyone on that street. Or he can ask a neighbor on his own street if they would be OK with him putting his trash in their bin before he leaves. Or he can ask a neighbor if they’d be willing to pull his trash cans to the curb and return his empty cans to their rightful place once they are empty.

 

If Lee doesn’t want to talk to his neighbors and ask permission or seek their help, then the right thing is to let his trash sit until he returns from vacation. A quick search of government websites around the country suggests that the fines for dumping your trash in someone else’s bins without permission can prove steep enough that an odorous garage is far preferable.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

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