What goes in a dumpster in Columbia, SC.

Load it: the ordinary mixed load

Household contents, furniture, boxes, and clothing. Cabinets, countertops, and trim. Drywall, lumber, flooring, and carpet. Roofing debris. General construction and demolition material. This is what a roll-off exists for — load it evenly, keep everything below the top rail, and leave the rear door able to close so the box can leave when you are done.

What South Carolina bans outright

The state's Solid Waste Policy and Management Act — Title 44, Chapter 96 of the S.C. Code — draws hard lines. Lead-acid batteries may not be placed in any landfill; the statute makes it unlawful, full stop. Loads composed mostly of yard trash or land-clearing debris are barred from municipal solid waste landfill gates, which is why yard waste moves as its own stream everywhere in the Midlands. Waste tires, used oil, and white goods are regulated as restricted streams, and the statute's definition of white goods is broad: refrigerators, ranges, water heaters, freezers, dishwashers, trash compactors, washers, dryers, and air conditioners.

The practical version: batteries, whole tires, refrigerant appliances, and a truckload of brush all need their own route out. None of them disappears into a mixed box.

What the local gate charges

Lexington County's Edmund Landfill publishes the per-unit and per-ton reality behind those rules. Business rates from the schedule effective July 1, 2025:

Mixed C&D debris

$35.00 / ton

Clean concrete or asphalt

$28.00 / ton

Shingles, clean or mixed

$35.00 / ton

Mixed yard debris

$35.00 / ton

Clean yard debris / wood waste

$28.00 / ton

Fridge / freezer / AC — Freon recovery

$15.00 each

Passenger (DOT) tires, 20 or fewer

$1.50 each

Mattresses

$14.00 each

Improperly separated loads

$54.00 / ton

The pattern is the point. Clean single-material loads earn the $28 rates. Mixing costs $35. A load the gate has to untangle costs $54. Electronics follow the same logic as the per-unit items — the county takes at most five per day per household or business, free for residents and $300 per ton for businesses. The landfill runs Monday through Saturday, 7:00 AM to 4:30 PM; the department answers at (803) 755-3325. On the Richland County side, the county operates its own C&D landfill operation on Caughman Road North and free resident drop-off centers — call the county for gate details before hauling there yourself.

Checked against S.C. Code Title 44 and Lexington County's published fee schedule, August 2026

Never in any box

Liquids of every kind: paint, fuel, oil, solvents, and anything in a sealed drum. Hazardous chemicals and pesticides. Medical waste. If the disposal route for an item is unclear, ask before it goes over the rail — a questionable item buried mid-load does not vanish, it just surfaces at the worst possible time, at the gate, priced at the penalty rate.

Dense material has its own page

Concrete, brick, dirt, and tile are legal loads with a physics problem: they hit the truck's legal hauling weight long before they fill a container. Heavy debris gets a smaller box and a controlled fill level — the 15-yard page covers how we quote it, and the construction page covers the multi-box jobs. For everything else, describe the load when you call and the box arrives matched to it.