The Massachusetts Waste Ban Guide: What 310 CMR 19.017 Actually Says

Most disposal advice on the internet was written for states that ban almost nothing. Fill the box, the box goes to the dump, and the only question is what it weighs. Massachusetts is the other end of the scale, and anyone working from that assumption here will eventually get a letter with a state seal on it. The Commonwealth restricts more material from disposal than almost any state — sixteen streams, the oldest banned since 1990 — and the reason is not sentiment. It is arithmetic.

MassDEP's 2024 data tells it in one line. 6,220,000 tons disposed statewide: 7.6 percent to an in-state landfill, 47.7 percent to in-state combustion, and 44.7 percent — 2.78 million tons — trucked out of state entirely. The 2030 Solid Waste Master Plan is blunt about what comes next: in-state landfill capacity "is projected to decline to virtually zero by the end of the next decade," and combustion is capped at the existing 3.5-million-ton permitted capacity, so no relief comes from that direction either. Only 15 active landfills remain statewide. Massachusetts is running out of holes in the ground. Every rule below follows from that.

The rule itself: 310 CMR 19.017

The waste bans sit at 310 CMR 19.017, and the operative sentence is one line long: "No person shall dispose, transfer for disposal, or contract for disposal of the restricted material except in accordance with the restriction established in the table."

Read "transfer for disposal" twice. The ban does not wait until material reaches a landfill; it bites at the transfer station and the processor's tipping floor, the moment the load changes hands. And "contract for disposal" reaches the other way, to whoever ordered the container.

The full ban list

In the order they were added. Two are landfill-only; one is the only threshold-based ban on the list.

Three things almost everyone gets wrong

1. Asphalt shingles are not banned

The table bans asphalt pavement. It does not ban asphalt shingles, which appear nowhere on the list. A tear-off from a Montello two-family is not a banned material, and anyone who says otherwise has read the word asphalt and stopped there. There is a real recycling route — shingles get crushed into new asphalt mix or road base — and a clean shingle-only load prices better than the same tonnage in mixed debris, so we run tear-offs as their own container by choice. Same reasoning as our size guide: small in volume, enormous in weight.

2. "Electronics" are not banned

Only cathode ray tubes are on the table — the glass picture tube in an old television or a pre-flat-panel monitor. A flat-screen TV, a laptop or a printer is not a listed banned material under 310 CMR 19.017. Massachusetts is not an electronics-ban state. The practical answer is unchanged: the Recycle Depot takes TVs, monitors and CRTs, and city bulk collection takes one for a $20 prepaid fee at any size.

3. Wood and whole tires are banned from landfills only

This one changes how a demolition job is priced. Treated and untreated wood is restricted from landfill disposal, not from disposal generally. It may lawfully go to a Massachusetts municipal waste combustor, and since combustion handles nearly half the disposed tonnage in this state, a great deal of it does. The tire ban is likewise on whole tires at landfills; shredded is fine. Our page on construction debris disposal works through the destination question, and demolition debris covers staging those loads.

What changed on 1 November 2022

The latest amendments came in with the 2030 Master Plan and did exactly three things:

• Added mattresses, all generators.
• Added textiles, all generators.
• Lowered the commercial organics threshold from 1 ton to half a ton per week. The only threshold on the table, and halving it pulled a great many mid-sized restaurants, schools and care facilities into scope.

The carve-outs

Both new bans exclude items contaminated with "mold, bodily fluids, insects, oil, or hazardous substances" — a mattress out of a flooded basement after a spring thaw is not covered. The textile ban also excludes wiping cloths, shop rags, pillows, cushions and rugs; the mattress ban also excludes mattress pads and toppers, waterbeds and futons.

MassDEP publishes a Contaminated Mattress Certification Form for those — recommended, not mandatory, but it costs nothing and documents why. Do not stretch the exclusion: MassDEP's enforcement standard is that "there is no acceptable amount of mattresses." One in a disposal load is a violation.

Who is actually liable

The sentence from MassDEP's hauler guidance that most customers never see: "People who generate solid waste and people who transport it to disposal facilities are subject to waste ban requirements." Both ends of it: the generator and the hauler.

Facilities do not spot problems by chance either. They must run random comprehensive monthly load inspections — from 4 vehicles a month at a small facility up to 20 a month above 1,000 tons a day. On a failed load the facility notifies the driver immediately, then writes to both the hauler and the generator within 45 days. Penalties reach $25,000 per violation per day for repeat, pattern or wilful violations.

So when we ask what is going in the box before we quote, it is not fussiness. In Massachusetts the hauler is on the hook alongside the customer, and a failed load generates paperwork with both names on it.

Where it actually goes in Brockton

The bans are half the answer. Here is the local route for each restricted material a Brockton household or job site actually produces.

The Depot also handles fluorescent lamps, propane and helium tanks, waste oil and antifreeze, and household recyclables. Paint and household chemicals are accepted 1 April to 31 October only, non-residents paying $8 per gallon for paint on the city's published schedule, plus a free Paint Swap Shed. What it does not take is construction debris. More in our Brockton disposal guide.

What the city itself will not take

City collection does not take construction debris, and it does not take doors. For items outside the programme — the city's own list names property cleanouts, automotive parts, bathtubs, kitchen cabinets, pipes, sheetrock, tree stumps, rocks, soil and asphalt — residents "must hire private haulers."

Read it with the ban table beside it. Sheetrock is clean gypsum wallboard. Asphalt and rocks are ABC. Pipes are metal. Stumps are yard waste. Every item the city refuses is also a material the state restricts, which is why it needs a permitted route rather than a curbside barrel — the whole job on a junk removal call.

Paint: PaintCare does not operate in Massachusetts

Search for leftover paint and you will be told to hand the cans back at a retailer through PaintCare, funded by a stewardship fee you supposedly paid at the register. PaintCare does not operate in Massachusetts. The enabling bill, H.886 and S.647, sits in Senate Ways and Means, unenacted. No fee is charged here and no take-back network exists, so half a dozen gallons carried into a paint store gets a polite no.

The real answer is local and seasonal: the Depot's 1 April to 31 October window for paint and household chemicals, and the free Paint Swap Shed, open to residents and businesses with no limits. Plan a clearout around it — November to March that route is closed.

Why the bans exist at all

Back to the capacity numbers. Fifteen active landfills, in-state capacity heading for effectively zero within the decade, combustion capped where it is, 2.78 million tons a year already leaving on trucks. Massachusetts cannot bury its way out and cannot burn its way out, so the only lever left is keeping material out of the disposal stream. A ban list is capacity management by regulation.

It also explains something Brockton residents live with every year. Leaves were banned at the end of 1991 and the rest of yard waste at the end of 1992. That is why the city runs a separate seasonal yard-waste stream at all, why the rules insist on barrels or paper kraft bags rather than plastic, and why the Depot takes it year-round. It is a thirty-year-old state restriction working its way down to the curb — the same process now working through mattresses and textiles, which is why a bed that was ordinary trash in 2021 is a violation today.

The short version

Four habits cover most of it: pull the metal before loading, keep the wallboard out of the mixed load, run clean rubble as its own container, and route mattresses, textiles, appliances, CRTs, tires and batteries to the Depot or the bulk programme instead of the box. Sizes and weights are on the dumpster sizes page; what the fire code requires for a container left overnight is in our Brockton permit guide. Read the primary sources directly: the bans and the Master Plan from MassDEP, the Depot and bulk rules from the City of Brockton, and material-by-material guidance from RecyclingWorks Massachusetts.

BKT & Co Dumpster Rental Brockton has run out of the yard at 1109 Montello Street since 2011. Brendan Teixeira started with one truck and four cans and still answers the phone, and he will say plainly when the Depot or the bulk programme beats a container on the driveway. When it does not, call (508) 436-2303 or use our contact page.