Valley Curbside Recycling

Don’t know if anyone saw this in The Roanoke Times this weekend (remember, that paper can be recycled at the curb in Christiansburg!), but the Virginia section had a big article entitled “Region’s leaders want to increase recycling“.

The piece focused primarily on the Roanoke and Botetourt areas of the region, but the issues at hand - lack of recycling availability, distance from curbs to recycling centers, and the comprehensive cost of a community recycling program - most definitely transfer across county lines.  And those reasons shouldn’t stop us from implementing recycling programs that encourage, and even reward, resident participation.  You can see how Montgomery County - including numbers from Christiansburg - measures up against other areas of the state in the image below, and if you’d like to read the full report from the Virginia DEQ, you can download it here.  And you can bet we’re gonna see these numbers improve the longer Valley Curbside Recycling is around!

We’ve got a long way to go, Christiansburg, but we are moving in the right direction.  Will recycling ever be a profit hog for municipalities? Most likely not.  We shouldn’t be trying to judge whether a recycling program is successful by comparing it to a profit goal.  Recycling will cost money, it’s inevitable - we’re dealing with commodities.  What we should be paying attention to is whether we’re reducing source waste, and whether we’re having an impact on our community landfill space.  If we can do those two things, than we can reduce the total cost of our community’s solid waste … and ultimately, have a tremendous impact on the overall health of the communities we live in.

So are recycling and profits mutually exclusive? No, absolutely not.  Do we feel that a curbside program is crucial to the economic, sustainable and individual health of Christiansburg, both now and in the future? Without a doubt.  Is Valley Curbside Recycling committed to being a part of the future in Christiansburg?

You can take it to the bank.