Understanding this article is crucial for Horry County residents addressing the issue of South Carolina landfill waste.

South Carolina has never taken a hard look at what actually goes into its landfills — until now. The state’s first comprehensive Waste Characterization Study, released in March 2026, sorted through trash at eight landfills and four transfer stations to answer a question that should have been asked decades ago: what are we burying, and how much of it belongs there?

The answer should alarm every taxpayer in Horry County. **Roughly half of all municipal solid waste disposed of in South Carolina is food and paper — materials that could be composted or recycled instead of taking up space in landfills running out of room.** The study, performed by MSW Consultants and funded by an EPA Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant, sampled inbound loads during the summer and fall of 2025. Its findings reveal a waste stream dominated not by exotic hazards or unavoidable refuse, but by groceries that went bad and cardboard boxes that missed the recycling bin, contributing to the growing problem of South Carolina landfill waste.

For a county where the landfill already rises 145 feet above sea level and the solid waste authority lives and dies by air space, every unnecessary ton buried is money and time burned.

Addressing South Carolina Landfill Waste Challenges

## The Breakdown: Food and Paper Dominate

The statewide study cataloged 3,574,431 tons of municipal solid waste disposed across South Carolina [SCDES Waste Characterization Study, 2026].

Food waste ranked as the single largest category at 26.2 percent — 939,464 tons of both loose and packaged food buried in the ground. Paper followed at 24.4 percent, accounting for 873,943 tons, including cardboard, mixed recyclable paper, and compostable paper products. Together, food and paper make up roughly half the total waste stream.

For context, the EPA’s most recent national composition data from 2018 put food waste at 21.6 percent and paper at 23.1 percent nationally [EPA, 2018]. South Carolina’s food waste share runs nearly five percentage points higher than the national figure, suggesting the state has a disproportionate problem with uneaten food reaching the landfill.

Traditional recyclables — cardboard, paper, aluminum and steel cans, plastic containers, and glass jars — made up 17 percent of disposed waste, totaling 612,727 tons [SCDES Waste Characterization Study, 2026]. These are materials with established recycling markets that ended up buried instead. The cardboard capture rate sits at just 55 percent statewide, meaning 45 percent of all cardboard produced in South Carolina goes straight into the ground.

## The Cost of Burying Recyclables

Those 612,727 tons of recyclable materials didn’t just waste landfill capacity. They cost money twice — once to bury, and once in lost revenue.

**Disposing of recyclables that had viable markets cost South Carolina an estimated $27 million** [SCDES Waste Characterization Study, 2026]. The lost recycling market value for those same materials totaled $91 million. Combined, that represents $118 million in economic value that the state threw away — literally.

To put that in local terms, Horry County’s Solid Waste Authority operates on a $44.6 million annual budget, with tipping fee revenue exceeding $16 million per year [Horry County SWA]. The statewide cost of burying recyclables is more than two and a half times the entire HCSWA budget. Even a fractional share of that $91 million in lost market value, redirected through better recycling infrastructure, would meaningfully offset the costs that Horry County taxpayers shoulder for waste management.

The state currently recycles 1,190,234 tons of municipal solid waste per year — a 23.5 percent recycling rate, with a recycling-to-disposal ratio stuck at roughly one-to-four since 2021 [SCDES Waste Characterization Study, 2026]. South Carolina’s goal is a 50 percent recycling rate by 2030, more than double current performance. Only 18 of 46 counties currently meet the disposal target of 3.25 pounds per person per day.

SCDES Director Myra Reece said the food waste and paper numbers “reflect clear opportunities for South Carolina to divert about 50 percent of the municipal solid waste disposed of in the state” [SCDES Waste Characterization Study, 2026].

## Why This Hits Horry County Harder

Horry County is not an average South Carolina county when it comes to waste. The Grand Strand’s tourism economy and explosive population growth have created a disposal challenge that the statewide averages understate.

The county’s population reached 413,391 in 2024, a 34 percent increase from 309,350 in 2015 [Horry County SWA]. Municipal solid waste tracked that growth, rising 27 percent over the same period to 304,000 tons in 2024. Construction and demolition waste more than doubled in a decade, reaching 286,000 tons in 2024 and growing at roughly 4 percent annually. Tourism adds a layer that most counties never deal with: approximately 75 percent of Horry County’s waste comes from multi-family residential and commercial sectors, driven by the millions of visitors who eat, shop, and discard along the Grand Strand each year.

**The county’s landfill, already 145 feet above sea level, was originally projected to close in 2050.** New capacity construction has pushed that estimate past 2060, but the trajectory is clear [Horry County SWA]. The Class II landfill is expected to reach capacity in roughly four years. Every ton of food waste or recyclable paper buried in that space is a ton that didn’t need to be there, and it brings the closure date forward.

Danny Knight, HCSWA Executive Director, has been blunt about the stakes. Those compactors you see running…are packing just as tight as you can pack it. Because air space — you live and die by air space,” Knight said [Horry County SWA]. Assistant Executive Director Ed Marr echoed that urgency: “Every day in a landfill is a construction project. The only thing that we want to do is extend that timeline out as far as we can, either by building new capacity or recycling.”

## Recycling Revenue Shows the Upside

The financial case for diversion is not theoretical in Horry County. The authority already proves it works on a smaller scale.

HCSWA recycled 110,000 tons in fiscal year 2024, processing approximately 18,000 tons through its materials recovery facility with a rejection rate of about 10 percent [Horry County SWA]. Recycling revenue hit $4.1 million in fiscal year 2024, a 64 percent increase from $2.5 million in 2022. The participation rate, however, sits at just 30.5 percent — meaning nearly seven in ten county residents either lack access to recycling or choose not to use it.

If the statewide waste composition holds locally — and there is no reason to assume Horry County’s food-and-paper share is lower, given its tourism-heavy commercial waste profile — then roughly half of the 304,000 tons the county sends to the landfill each year is potentially divertible material. Even modest gains in diversion would extend landfill life, reduce disposal costs, and generate additional recycling revenue.

The county’s top recycled materials mirror the state pattern. Statewide, metal leads the recycled stream at 28.7 percent, followed by paper at 22 percent and organics at 15 percent [SCDES Waste Characterization Study, 2026]. The state has also launched the *Don’t Waste Food SC* outreach campaign and scheduled a Food Waste Summit for June 16, 2026, in Columbia — a direct response to the study’s finding that food waste is the single largest landfill component.

Landfill gas already powers 2,100 homes in Horry County through three 1,400-horsepower engines [Horry County SWA]. That energy recovery is valuable, but it is a consolation prize. Keeping compostable and recyclable material out of the landfill in the first place delivers more economic value per ton than capturing methane from it after burial.

## What Comes Next

South Carolina’s 2030 targets — a 50 percent recycling rate, a 50 percent reduction in food waste, and disposal capped at 3.25 pounds per person per day — would require doubling the current recycling rate in four years [SCDES Waste Characterization Study, 2026]. No state has accomplished that kind of transformation at that speed.

For Horry County, the math is more immediate. A Class II landfill nearing capacity in four years and a main landfill that lives on borrowed time make diversion a fiscal necessity, not an environmental aspiration. The 26.2 percent of waste that is food and the 24.4 percent that is paper represent the clearest targets — high-volume, divertible materials with existing composting and recycling markets.

**The $91 million in lost recycling market value statewide is not an abstraction.** It is revenue that communities like Horry County leave on the table every year while simultaneously paying to bury the materials that would generate it. HCSWA’s 64 percent increase in recycling revenue between 2022 and 2024 proves the market exists. The question is whether the infrastructure and participation can scale fast enough to keep the landfill open and the tipping fees from climbing.

The first statewide waste study in South Carolina’s history delivered a straightforward verdict: the state buries too much of what it could save, and the cost falls on local taxpayers and local landfills. For Horry County residents watching the county’s solid waste footprint grow alongside its population, the path forward runs through the recycling bin and the compost pile — not through adding more height to a landfill that already towers over the coastal plain.

## Further Reading

– South Carolina Department of Environmental Services, *Statewide Waste Characterization Study*, March 2026 — https://des.sc.gov/sites/des/files/Documents/BLWM/Recycling/MSW%20STUDY.pdf

– SCDES News Release: Study Details Types, Amounts of Materials Entering S.C.’s Landfills — https://des.sc.gov/news/scdes-encourages-recycling-and-food-waste-reduction-new-study-details-types-amounts-materials

– Horry County Solid Waste Authority — https://www.solidwasteauthority.org/

– U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, *National Overview: Facts and Figures on Materials, Wastes and Recycling*, 2018 data — https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials

– South Carolina Public Radio: New Study Details Materials Entering State Landfills — https://www.southcarolinapublicradio.org/sc-news/2026-04-02/new-study-details-types-amounts-of-materials-entering-state-landfills-areas-for-opportunity

– MyHorryNews: Push for Recycling Could Extend Life of Horry County’s Landfill — https://www.myhorrynews.com/news/boom-at-the-beach-push-for-recycling-could-extend-life-of-horry-county-s-landfill/article_2534491f-d497-4068-8e32-987f076f9685.html