This Wednesday is a “Red Wednesday”, which usually means trash and recycling pickup, but because of the recent Memorial Day holiday, pickups will hopefully move to Thursday. Hopefully, because the City’s street repaving of neighborhood streets continues after Monday’s Memorial Day holiday.
Please go over what can be recycled.
NOTE: CVWMA (Central Virginia Waste Management Authority) has announced that all curbside recycling must now be INSIDE the CVWMA containers with lid closed. Items beside the container or on top of it will not be collected. In fact, incorrect setouts may not be collected at all. This is new as of July 1 for all our curbside recyclers, with the exception of townhomes/condos still using small bins. (And yes, this also applies to flattened cardboard boxes.)
Ideally, rolling recycling containers are stored and deployed in the back alleys along with trash cans. Please make sure you pick up containers after pickup tomorrow night. More CVWMA information can be found at this link:
https://cvwma.com/cvwma-locations/richmond/
In order to take your recycling to the next level, read this: 10 ways to improve your recycling.
In local recycling news, the Central Virginia Waste Management Authority announced last week that the Central Virginia region recycled 623,451 tons, or 58.6%, of its solid waste in 2024.
Yard and wood waste, which is composted or chipped into mulch, was the top recycled material in 2024, with 240,501 tons.
Cardboard, paper, cans, bottles and containers accounted for 150,181 tons.
Metal made up 174,545 tons.
The authority is required to calculate the regional recycling rate each year and submit a report to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. The region comprises the cities of Colonial Heights, Hopewell, Petersburg and Richmond, the town of Ashland, and the counties of Charles City, Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Henrico, New Kent, Powhatan and Prince George.
These localities are members of CVWMA, a public-service authority established in 1990, to help the region meet state recycling requirements. Virginia requires the region to recycle at least 25% of its solid waste each year. In 2023, the regional recycling rate was 58.1%. The statewide recycling rate in 2023 (the most recent available) was 42.5%. More information on statewide recycling activity is available at DEQ’s website.
The recycling rate is calculated by dividing the amount recycled in the region by the amount of trash generated. CVWMA uses a national estimate of 4.9 pounds of trash per person per day, multiplied by the region’s population of 1.29 million, to estimate total trash.
CVWMA collects data for the regional recycling rate from its own residential recycling programs and from businesses that provide information voluntarily.
For more information, including monthly reports on CVWMA’s residential programs, visit www.cvwma.com/cvwma-data-center/.
In national recycling news, the Trump administration has injected uncertainty into grant awardees’ ability to access federal funding and canceled certain contracts. It’s forcing recyclers to view the government differently.
This goes along with the Environmental Protection Agency having frozen and or terminated billions in funding for communities identified as disproportionately impacted by pollution. These executive orders are the latest environmental policy move prompting a spate of protests and lawsuits— and leaving community-led projects in various developmental stages hanging.
In international recycling news, global recycling rates are failing to keep pace with a culture focused on infinite economic growth and consumerism, with the proportion of recycled materials re-entering supply chains falling for the eighth year running, according to a new report.
Only 6.9% of the 106bn tonnes of materials used annually by the global economy came from recycled sources, a 2.2 percentage point drop since 2015, researchers from the Circle Economy thinktank found.
The problem is systemic, they say: the rise in consumption is even more rapid than the growth in global population, and although some companies are increasing the amount of recycled material they use, the majority ignore the issue with no apparent penalties. This means that societies generate more waste than recycling systems can handle.
