How Much Clay Dirt Can You Throw Away in a Residential Garbage Bin?

I’m Tim the techno-gardener—an electrical engineer who applies engineering principles to gardening. In this article, I’m going to answer a question a lot of gardeners quietly wonder about: how much clay soil can you safely dispose of using a standard residential trash can?

The Clay Soil Problem

Where I live, the soil is brick-hard clay. Clay soil has poor drainage and tends to compact, which reduces oxygen availability to roots. It’s also difficult to till by hand, and pulling weeds is a pain—often the tops snap off at ground level, leaving the roots behind.

I have multiple flower beds where I want to completely remove the clay and replace it with compost and garden soil. Over the years, I’ve dug out clay and dumped it in a pile in my backyard… and now I’m left with an unsightly mound of dirt.

Sure, I could hire a contractor with a dump truck and a bobcat—but that would cost a ton of money. I wanted a solution that was cheap and easy.

My “Slow Disposal” Idea

The idea I came up with is to gradually dispose of the clay through my household garbage bins—adding a bit each week until it’s all gone.

But that raises two big questions:

How much dirt can I put in the bin without getting in trouble with the city?
How long will it take to clear out a garden using this method?

The Spec Printed on the Trash Can (ANSI Z245.60)

While researching this, I noticed something interesting printed right on the garbage cans themselves: an ANSI specification number—ANSI Z245.60. ANSI stands for American National Standards Institute.

I looked it up and found the full title: Equipment Technology and Operations for Wastes and Recyclable Materials — Waste Containers — Compatibility Dimensions (published in 2008).

As an engineer, I kind of got goosebumps seeing that. It means the trash can is built to a standard—and as long as I stay within that specification, I should be okay.

My container is a 96-gallon bin, and the spec indicates a maximum load of 335 pounds.

The Real Variable: Moisture

The only question now is: how much does clay soil weigh for a given volume? To find out, I filled a 5-gallon bucket with clay and weighed it on a bathroom scale.

Important: wet soil is much heavier than dry soil—sometimes nearly twice as heavy. That means moisture content is the difference between “safe” and “overloaded.”

To measure moisture, I used a Vegetronix VG-METER-200 to check volumetric water content (VWC) and decide whether I can add more soil—or need to cut back.

If you’re going to try this yourself, I recommend using a dielectric soil moisture sensor, not one of those cheap resistance-based meters from the hardware store.

My Test: 5 Gallons of Wet Clay

In my test, the meter read about 40% volumetric water content. The soil was that wet because it had recently rained.

That means in 5 gallons of clay soil, there’s about 2.5 gallons of water. Water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon, so the water alone contributes roughly 16 pounds. The remaining weight—about 39 pounds—comes from the clay itself.

If the soil were bone-dry, I could dispose of roughly an extra 2 gallons at the same total weight as the wet 5-gallon bucket.

Clay’s maximum water-holding capacity is around 50%, which means the weight of 5 gallons of clay can vary by as much as ~20 pounds depending on moisture.

A Practical Safety Margin

I don’t want to load the bin to the maximum, because we still throw out regular household garbage and I want a buffer. So I’m choosing a conservative target: about 120 pounds of soil per pickup—roughly 1/3 of the bin’s rated 335-pound capacity.

Each week, based on the moisture measurement, I’ll dispose of:

10 gallons if the soil is wet (heavier), or
15 gallons if the soil is drier (lighter)

The goal is to stay near that 120-pound soil target while keeping things safe and consistent.

How Much Clay Can You Dispose of in a Year?

Here’s where it gets fun. At 10 gallons per week, that’s:

520 gallons per year, and
About 3,640 pounds total—nearly 2 tons of dirt per year

And it doesn’t cost me a dime.

For scale, an IBC tote holds about 330 gallons, so that’s close to two IBC totes worth of clay removed per year.

The Moment of Truth: Will the Truck Lift It?

After calculating the numbers and loading the bin, I did the real test: I set it out for pickup to see if the garbage truck could lift it.

Awesome—they took my clay dirt.

Have you ever thrown away heavy items in a residential garbage container? I’d love to hear about your experience—drop it in the comments below.