City services

Loganville Trash Rules: Which System Are You Actually On?

Loganville sits in two counties, so there are three different waste systems inside one town name. Knowing which you are on tells you when you need a container.

Three systems, one town name

We are a dumpster company, so this may be an odd thing to lead with: for a lot of household jobs around here you should not rent a container at all. But which free options you have depends entirely on something most people have never checked.

Those three are: City of Loganville collection, the Walton County Green Bag programme, and Gwinnett County's approved-hauler arrangements. They are genuinely different in cost and in what they take.

Inside city limits: two bulk items a week

If you are inside the City of Loganville, garbage service is set up when your water utility account is opened and billed monthly on the utility bill. You get a gray 95-gallon cart, and:

Two household bulk items every week, in addition to the cart.

Two a week is more generous than most cities we work in, and it means a slow, staged clear-out of furniture and appliances can be done for nothing. A sofa and an armchair this week, a mattress and a dresser next week. If you are not in a hurry, use it.

Recycling is voluntary here, which surprises people. You can opt out entirely, or choose an 18-gallon bin or a 65-gallon cart. The recycle bin arrives inside the trash cart on delivery.

One scheduling note: if your collection day falls on or after a holiday, service is delayed by one day for the rest of that week.

What the city will not collect

This is the part that sends people to us, and it is worth reading carefully.

Read that list against a renovation and the problem is obvious. A bathroom gut produces a toilet, a vanity, tile and drywall. A flooring job produces carpet and pad. A deck rebuild produces wood. None of it is a bulk item.

That is the clearest line between what the city does and what a container is for.

Yard waste: ten bags and no pine straw

City yard waste collection has its own specific rules:

• Yard waste curbside by 7am on your collection day, or the night before
• Small yard waste — leaves and grass clippings — must be in brown paper bags
• A maximum of ten paper bags per week will be collected
• No mulch or pine straw can be picked up at all
• Larger yard waste is collected by the city chipper on its own schedule — there is a dedicated line for questions about limbs and pile size

The pine straw exclusion is the one that catches people, because pine straw is the default landscape mulch across this whole region and gets refreshed every year. When you strip out last season's, the city will not take it.

Ten bags a week handles ordinary lawn maintenance well. It does not handle a storm clean-up, a clearing job, or anything involving stumps, soil or sod.

Unincorporated Walton: the Green Bag programme

Outside city limits in Walton County there is no curbside collection at all. The county runs a pay-as-you-throw system instead.

• Green Bags are 32-gallon, 2 mil bags printed with the Walton County emblem
• They cost $2.00 each, and that price includes the dumping charge
• They are the only garbage bags accepted at the manned convenience sites
• They are sold at retailers across the county and at the recycling centre — there is an information line for purchase locations
• The county's stated alternative is to contract a private hauler for a fee

The reasoning behind it is genuine: federal rules require disposal in lined Subtitle D landfills and the State of Georgia has mandated a 25% reduction in solid waste, so a volume-based system pushes both in the right direction. And for ordinary weekly household rubbish it is fair — you pay for what you throw away.

Where it stops working is volume and bulk. Bags cannot take a sofa, a mattress, a water heater or a pile of drywall, and a clear-out that runs to forty bags is eighty dollars plus a lot of trips.

Gwinnett County: pick a hauler

On the Gwinnett side, the county does not collect directly. Residents choose from county-approved haulers and set up service with them individually.

Bulk items and white goods are limited to two per week, with pickups requested through the county system. Construction debris is not a bulk item there either.

Gwinnett Solid Waste has a general line for questions about which hauler serves a given address, which is worth using if you have just moved and are not sure who to sign up with.

How to tell which one you are on

• Your property tax bill names the county levying it — that is definitive.
• Your utility bill. If the City of Loganville bills you for sanitation, you are inside city limits.
• Either county's tax assessor parcel search will confirm the county.
• Not the ZIP code. 30052 covers city addresses, unincorporated Walton addresses and Walnut Grove, which is a separate city entirely.
• Ask us. We work both sides of that line every day.

When a container is the right answer

• Any renovation or remodelling project. Construction debris is excluded from every one of the three systems.
• Carpet, pad, drywall, wood or a toilet coming out — named exclusions.
• Pine straw or mulch being stripped out, which the city will not take.
• More than ten bags of yard waste, or anything with stumps, soil or sod in it.
• A whole-house or garage clear-out you want done in a weekend rather than two items a week for two months.
• Any unincorporated Walton address with real volume, where bags and trips add up fast and cannot take bulky items at all.
• Business, rental or commercial property.
• Anything a contractor generated — that debris is theirs to remove.

Call and describe what you are clearing. If your city or county service will handle it, we will say so — and if it genuinely will not, we will put you in the right size container.