Recycling Management

Steve Coe: I'm Steve Coe with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Today, we are talking about how to recycle and now in this segment we are going to talk about recycling management.

Where you live will determine how you can recycle. The first step is to contact your local government to see what options they have for recycling. There are usually three. First of which is Curbside recycling. This is normally an urban type system where bins are placed at the curb on a weekly or biweekly basis and collected either by the local government or through a contractor. The second is Drop-off Sites. Drop-off Sites is where citizens can take the recycling to collection. These are usually manned or unmanned depending on the local government. They are normally called convenient centers or recycling Drop-off centers and maybe located at fire stations, at transfer stations, at landfills, or other public areas.

Recycling not only happens at the local government level, but also happens in the private sector. Where you live there maybe scrap metal buyers who are interested in your aluminum cans and steel cans. They are also may be local churches, or nonprofit groups who will collect the materials for recycling or reuse, such as newspaper, cell phones, glasses, and the like. So that's a little bit information about recycling management. The next segment we will deal with recycling at the home and the office.