Virginia reports highest recycling rate ever

Virginia reported its highest recycling rate ever on Wednesday, with 40.5 percent of all wastes being reused or remade in some way in 2010.

In its annual report on the subject, the state Department of Environmental Quality also said that all localities from the Eastern Shore to the Tennessee border met their mandatory recycling goals last year, of either 15 or 25 percent of their wastes, depending on their populations - the second straight year that has happened.

Virginia has been tracking such trends since 1991.

"The significant improvement reflects the ongoing support by Virginians for recycling in their communities," David Paylor, director of the state environmental department, said in a statement.

In Hampton Roads, the percentage of wastes recycled rose but was still below the statewide level. The region recycled 39.3 percent of its trash and debris, up from 36.5 percent in 2009, but below its record of just over 50 percent in 2006.

Locally and statewide, officials said the increases are linked to more cities and counties expanding their recycling programs, making it easier for residents to recycle and for more types of materials to be collected at the curb.

Chesapeake, Suffolk, Southampton County and Smithfield all have gone to the expanded systems, known as "single stream," joining Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Franklin in offering the big, wheeled bins that can hold up to 95 gallons of materials, from aluminum cans to cardboard boxes to junk mail.

Among cities in the region, only Portsmouth still lacks a curbside program, though some residents contract specially for the environmental service. Suffolk quit curbside collections in 2007, but started them back up this year.

Recycling rates across the region have increased since the Southeastern Public Service Authority scrapped all recycling initiatives last year amid financial woes and pressures to let private companies do the work. SPSA had been running the curbside program since 1988.

Another change is how private companies are contracting with rural communities to handle recycling instead of local government doing so. On the Eastern Shore, for example, Tidewater Fiber Corp., based in Chesapeake, oversees recycling for Northampton and Accomack counties.

Where those counties once barely cracked double digits, last year Northampton and Accomack showed recycling rates of 25.1 percent and 28.5 percent, respectively.

Among urban areas in Virginia, Hampton Roads had the sixth-highest rate. The Richmond area finished the year on top, with 55.5 percent of its wastes being recycled, followed by Fredericksburg, Bristol, Northern Virginia, then the Northern Shenandoah Valley, according to the state report.

On paper, the amount of electronics recycled dropped by nearly 20 percent last year after skyrocketing the year before. Steve Coe, state recycling coordinator, said this may reflect how businesses and companies are offering "e-cycling" of cellphones, computers and TVs on their own and not reporting the results to the state.

"There's still a lot of this happening, just more by the manufacturers," Coe said.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com