10 Things Trash Crews in South Carolina Wish You’d Stop Doing
Think a dead battery is harmless once it lands in your trash can?
Far from it.
Fire crews across South Carolina have been called out for lithium-ion battery fires breaking out inside garbage trucks.
These are the things trash crews in South Carolina wish residents would stop doing.
1. Parking Too Close to the Can
South Carolina trash crews run into the same jam on many collection days: A car sits parked a foot from a garbage can the automated arm can’t reach.
It won’t try.
Charleston’s public service department requires a minimum of six feet of clearance between a parked vehicle and the can on any street where cars line the curb.
That gap gives the mechanical arm room to swing out, wrap around the container, and set it back down without clipping a bumper.
Columbia, Myrtle Beach, and Greenville run the same style of automated trucks, and every one of them needs a clear lane to work.
Move the car first.
How Much Room South Carolina Trash Crews Need
Charleston gives its trash crews three different clearance numbers, and many residents only remember one of them.
A cart needs 3 to 4 feet of space from a mailbox, 2 feet from a recycling bin, and a full 6 feet from a car parked on the street.
Skip any one of those numbers, and the automated arm can’t wrap around the cart, so the truck moves on to the next house instead.
2. Piling Bags on a Cart That Won’t Close
Columbia’s sanitation crews won’t touch a cart that’s stuffed past its lid, and the city’s own rule backs them up.
The city states plainly that a cart won’t be emptied if it’s overflowing or has trash sitting on top of a lid that can’t close.
Bags balanced on a closed lid don’t count as inside the cart.
Not close enough.
A lid that won’t shut can also fly open mid-lift, scattering whatever’s underneath across the street.
Crews would rather leave two extra bags behind for next week than clean up a mess spread across the block.
3. Mixing Yard Waste Into the Garbage Cart
Charleston’s trash crews call a pile that blends grass clippings with garbage bags an unclean set-out, and the city’s rules let them leave it at the curb untouched.
The whole pile waits.
No household garbage may sit with yard waste at the curb, period.
Bagged trash, loose branches, and a pile of clippings all read as one tangled mess to a crew working a tight route.
Every skipped pile pushes the rest of that day’s route later for everyone else waiting on it.
4. Bagging Leaves and Clippings in Plastic
Leaves and grass still turn up jammed into plastic grocery bags for South Carolina’s trash crews nearly every week, even though Charleston calls for paper lawn bags instead.
Plastic doesn’t break down at the composting yard where yard waste ends up.
Nobody signed up for that.
Someone still has to cut the bag open and pick the leaves out by hand, and Horry County runs the same paper-bag rule for the same reason.
5. Tossing Batteries in With the Trash
South Carolina trash crews have watched a truckload catch fire over something as small as a dead phone battery.
Lithium-ion batteries are a recurring cause of collection-truck fires, and South Carolina’s environmental agency now runs a statewide safe-disposal campaign with drop-off sites across the state to keep them out of the cart.
A crushed battery can spark inside the truck’s compactor.
Sparks don’t wait.
It’s why South Carolina keeps steering residents toward a drop-off site instead of the cart.
Psst! How much do you know about South Carolina’s trash and recycling history? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
South Carolina Trash Trivia
Test yourself on dumpsters, recycling, and South Carolina’s own cleanup record. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
The word “dumpster” comes from the last name of a onetime Tennessee mayor who patented a mechanical loading system in 1935. What was his name?
6. Dumping Warm Ashes Into the Cart
Charleston bans hot ashes from the cart outright, and South Carolina's trash crews see why every grilling season.
Charcoal and fireplace ash can hold enough heat to reignite a fire up to three days after the grill goes cold.
A pile that looks like dead gray dust can still be hot underneath.
Hot enough to catch fire.
Wet the ashes down, let them sit for two full days, then bag them separately from everything else.
7. Setting a Propane Tank at the Curb
South Carolina trash crews aren't allowed to take a propane tank at the curb, and the reason has nothing to do with paperwork.
South Carolina's environmental agency treats a tank like this the same as paint and pool chemicals: hazardous waste that never belongs in a regular cart.
No exceptions apply.
A compactor truck crushes everything that goes into it, and gas still trapped inside a tank can rupture the metal and ignite what's left.
Small tanks belong at a propane exchange cage or a hazardous-waste drop-off, never inside the cart.
8. Sneaking a TV Into the Garbage Cart
South Carolina trash crews have to pull a television or computer back out of the cart whenever they spot a TV or computer because state law has banned both from landfills since 2011.
That law hasn't changed.
A 2010 law, often called the Manufacturer Responsibility and Consumer Convenience Act, keeps televisions, computer monitors, and printers out of every South Carolina landfill.
A hauler that misses a TV or computer still answers for it when that load crosses the scale, and nobody wants that fine.
Many counties run a free electronics drop-off so residents don't have to guess where an old TV goes.
9. Leaving an Empty Cart at the Curb for Days
For South Carolina trash crews, the same empty carts sit at curbside for days after pickup, well past what Columbia's own ordinance allows.
Columbia's rule puts carts back off the curb by 7:30 p.m. the same day, not whenever it's convenient.
A row of empty carts left out all week narrows the street for the next truck and every delivery driver behind it.
The whole block notices.
Pull it back to the driveway the same evening, not the next weekend.
10. Letting Kids Chase the Truck Down the Street
South Carolina's trash crews wish parents would stop letting kids treat the truck like a parade float.
Refuse collection ranked as the nation's fifth-deadliest job in 2024.
Waste Dive's analysis of that data found that most of those fatalities involved a vehicle in motion.
A backing truck carries blind spots no driver can see around.
One second is enough.
Wave from the porch instead of the curb, and let the truck finish the block on its own.
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Oysters, macaroni, and whatever was left over on a Sunday all went into the pan, and generations of South Carolinians have called the results pie ever since.
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