Can you put dog poop in the trash in Virginia?
Answered by the Scoop Cop team — Fairfax, Virginia.
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Yes. In Fairfax County and surrounding Northern Virginia jurisdictions, bagged dog waste goes in your regular household trash. It does not go in yard-waste bins, recycling, storm drains, or down a toilet in most cases.
Yard waste is the common mistake. Those bins are composted at municipal facilities that don't run hot enough or long enough to reliably kill pet-waste pathogens, so pet waste is excluded across NOVA collection programs. Putting it there can get a whole load rejected.
Storm drains are the other one. Anything entering a drain in this region flows untreated toward the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay, where nitrogen and bacteria from pet waste contribute directly to the water-quality problems the watershed is already fighting.
For our customers this is moot — we bag and haul waste off your property on every visit, so nothing sits in your bin between collections. If you're handling it yourself, double-bag it and put it out with regular trash rather than letting bags accumulate in the garage through a hot week.
Dog waste is a major pollutant in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Learn how pet waste from NOVA yards contaminates local streams, EPA data, and what owners can do.
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