Pittsylvania County supervisor pushes for more recycling

A Pittsylvania County su-pervisor hopes to get the county to recycle plastic and glass.

“It would help reduce vol-umes in the landfill,” said Staunton River Supervisor Marshall Ecker.

Offering residents more recycling options would benefit the environment, Ecker said. The county school system has taught its students the importance of recycling but there’s nowhere to take plastics and glass, he said.

Ecker said county officials have told him that recycling plastics and glass would not be viable. The county recycles light and heavy metals at the county landfill in Dry Fork and also recycles newspapers and aluminum cans.

Pittsylvania County allows residents to leave newspapers and aluminum cans at about 20 compacter sites throughout the county. The county recycled glass but stopped in the 1990s, said County Administrator Dan Sleeper. The practice cost too much taxpayer money, Sleeper said. Also, glass had to be separated into brown, green and white, or clear glass, and officials had to lock up alumi-num cans because people were stealing them, he said.

In addition, the market plays a role in why the county doesn’t recycle glass, Sleeper said.

“The problem is trying to get someone to buy the glass,” he said.

Otis Hawker, assistant county administrator, said the county had a glass-recycling program in the 90s as part of a state mandate. A company in Winston-Salem, N.C. bought the glass, but the wrong type of glass — such as that from windows — would get mixed in with the drinking bottles, contaminating them, Hawker said. The recycling cost went up for the company, which began charging the county and eventually stopped taking the glass, Hawker said.

In the meantime, the county continued accepting glass, using it to align new road beds at the landfill, Hawker said. But the county ceased recy-cling glass after it determined there was no market for it.

The county has never recy-cled plastic, Hawker said. The material comes in five or six different grades and the local market for it is nonexistent, Hawker said.

State law requires that a rural county like Pittsylvania recycle at least 15 percent of the recyclable material it collects. The county recycles at least 20 percent, Hawker said. The county landfill takes in about 42,000 tons of solid waste, which includes recycla-bles, per year, Hawker said.

“We have a good recycling program in the county,” Hawker said. “We’re always looking for ways to improve it.”

Ecker said he has talked to other localities and will talk to recyclers, researching the topic more to find out how much recycling costs and where materials are going.

Hawker said Ecker has a good idea. A county committee and the Board of Supervisors would have to review the matter — including an exami-nation of costs, distance to transport materials and if there are buyers of recyclables in the region — before action would be taken, Hawker said.