Yard Waste Removal in Wentzville, MO

Start with the law, because it governs everything else about this service. Missouri bans yard waste from sanitary landfills — grass clippings, leaves, brush and branches cannot be buried in this state. That is not a company preference, it is statute, and it means vegetative debris rides as a separate clean load to a composting or organics facility. It never goes in with a construction or household load. A few bags of grass in a demolition box can contaminate the whole container, and the disposal site is entitled to reject it.

So the practical rule on any job that mixes debris types is two containers. If you are pulling a deck and the overgrown shrubs in front of it, the lumber goes in one box and the brush goes in the other. Same on a storm cleanup, where fence panels, shingles and soffit come down alongside a split tree. Keeping both loads clean is cheaper and faster than sorting later, and what can go in a dumpster spells out exactly where the line sits.

The tree debris around here is oak, hickory, maple, sycamore, silver maple and Bradford pear, and the hardwood limb wood is far heavier than people expect — green oak carries a great deal of water, and a container of limb wood reaches weight long before it looks full. Bradford pear is its own annual event: the branch structure splits apart in spring wind across these subdivisions, reliably, every year. The storm cleanup guide covers what to deal with first.

What Goes In A Clean Green Load

Sizing A Green Waste Container

Brush is bulky and light right up until it is hardwood, and then it is neither. A 20 yard is the usual size for a residential storm cleanup or a big brush and hedge clearing — plenty of room for branches once they are cut down and stacked instead of thrown in whole. A 30 yard suits land clearing on a new lot, or a large wooded property doing leaves and brush together in one pass. Go the other way for anything with soil in it. Stumps, root balls, sod and topsoil belong in a 10 yard, because clay soil is dense enough to close a load out fast. Tell us the species and whether roots are coming out, and we will size it properly the first time.

Burning, Mixing And Keeping The Load Clean

Burning is not the easy answer it used to be. Open burning is restricted or banned outright in a good many municipalities around here, and even where a burn is allowed there are conditions on distance, wind, timing and what may be burned — never treated lumber, never construction debris. Rules differ from one city to the next and they do get revised, so check with your own municipality before you light anything. For most people the container is simply the legal, straightforward route. The other rule is not mixing: keep dirt, rock, treated lumber, fencing wire, plastic pots, bags and household trash out of a green load, because any of it can get the whole container rejected at the compost facility. See recycling and disposal in St. Charles County for the details.