Rules

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

Almost everything we cannot take has a proper route. The ones that catch people are the old radiators and whatever is at the back of the basement.

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, electronic 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 none of it is a City curbside item once the volume goes past a bagged, lidded, 95-gallon container.

Construction and renovation debris

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

None of this has a curbside route in Quincy at all — City residential collection is for household garbage.

Masonry, plaster and limestone

All fine, all extremely heavy. Slab, footings, brick, block, pavers, mortar and local limestone belong in a 10 yard, part-filled, and kept clean.

Roofing

Composition shingle, felt and underlayment, flashing and decking. Weight is the constraint, not acceptability — and on the finer older houses it may be slate or clay tile, which is heavier again.

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
• Electronics — televisions, monitors, computers
• Refrigerant-charged equipment that has not been professionally evacuated
• Asbestos-containing material — never a container, and a real risk in this town's older housing
• Medical and infectious waste, including sharps
• Agricultural chemicals — pesticides, herbicides, treatments
• Contaminated soil
• Fluorescent tubes and older ballasts
• Dirt, sod and rock in quantity without telling us — extremely heavy

⚠️ Four things Illinois law keeps out of landfills

These are not our rules and no fee gets round them. Illinois non-hazardous waste landfills are prohibited from accepting them, so our containers cannot take them either.

White goods is the one that surprises people most — fridges, freezers, washers, dryers and ranges look exactly like the sort of thing a container is for. They are not.

Free liquids is the one people find least intuitive: anything that would pour if the container tipped. A half-full paint tin is out; a dried-out can with the lid off is generally fine. An undrained water heater needs draining first.

Whole tires and hazardous waste both need their own routes, which is a question for Central Services or a private specialist rather than for us.

The routes for everything else

• Household garbage, within the limits — City collection if you are in a building of four units or fewer. Detail here.
• Recycling — City drop-off sites, not curbside. Check current locations with Central Services.
• Yard waste — City contractor, within tight limits: 1.5 inches, 50 pounds, bundled sticks, striped bags.
• Scrap metal — positive value, and genuinely worth separating here because older houses are full of cast iron radiators and soil stacks.
• Salvageable building material — doors, trim, mantels, hardware and flooring from an older Quincy house have a real market.
• City-wide clean-up events — Central Services organises these; worth asking about.
• Asbestos — a licensed abatement contractor, never a container.

One general point from the municipal code, and it is worth knowing: it is unlawful to dispose of garbage or household rubbish within the city except at a state-approved disposal site. There is no informal option, which is precisely why the proper routes matter.

Treated timber and landscape ties

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

Clean untreated wood and green waste — branches, brush, prunings — has its own cheaper route.

Treated timber does not. Pressure-treated lumber, painted or stained wood, laminated products and anything with a finish are excluded from the clean stream. 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. They are common in older Quincy gardens, heavily treated, and extremely heavy. They are a container job, not a yard waste one — and they are far past the 1.5-inch branch limit anyway.

Tell us which kind of wood you have. A clean load and a treated load go to different places, and mixing them turns the cheap one into the expensive one.

⚠️ Basements are where the problems hide

Nearly every house here has one, and it is where the prohibited items accumulate.

A typical basement in a long-held Quincy house holds: paint from four decades of redecorating, fuel for the mower, motor oil, a workbench with solvents and adhesives, batteries in tools nobody has used in years, fluorescent tubes from a shop light, an old chest freezer, and very often a second fridge.

Four things that matter:

• Clear the chemicals first, before anything else moves. Once boxes are stacked in front of a shelf, the shelf gets forgotten and the fuel can ends up loaded.
• The freezer and the second fridge are white goods — barred from landfill by state law, so they need their own route.
• Check for damp damage. Older basements here take water, and anything that sat wet is heavier and may need handling differently.
• ⚠️ Watch for old boiler and furnace insulation. In a pre-1980 house it may contain asbestos, and it is exactly the sort of thing that gets torn out in a basement clear-out without a second thought. In this town that is a real risk, not a theoretical one.

The compensation is the cast iron. Radiators, soil stacks and old boilers have genuine scrap value, and pulling them out keeps serious weight out of the container. That is money saved twice.

A pre-load checklist

• Walk the basement, garage and any shed and pull every chemical before anything else moves
• Check for batteries: power tools, garden equipment, emergency lights
• Pull out propane cylinders and aerosols, including "empty" ones
• Set electronics aside for proper recycling
• Check for the second fridge or chest freezer as well as the obvious one
• Drain anything holding liquid, including the water heater
• Put tires aside — they cannot go in
• Decide whether your wood is clean or treated — and keep them apart
• Landscape ties go in the container, not the yard waste
• Separate plaster, masonry and limestone into their own small container
• Pull the cast iron — radiators and soil stacks are worth real money
• In a pre-1980 house, test before you tear out insulation, tile or textured ceilings
• Load flat and heavy first, bulky on top, and stop at the rail