Popular recycling facility to close
Area residents soon will lose a reliable place to drop bags full of plastic milk jugs and old newspapers. The popular recycling drop-off facility at Fire Station No. 8, at Patterson and Forest avenues, will be closed by June.
Henrico County plans to demolish the firehouse, built in 1950, and build a larger station. But the parking lot, which already is crowded, will not support the traffic from cars dropping off recycling during and after construction.
Signs will be posted in advance of the facility's closing, which is expected to begin in June at the latest.
The facility is Henrico's most-frequented recycling site, said Steven Yob, the county's solid-waste division director.
The drop-off recycling facility will be relocated, possibly to an area near the Tuckahoe Rescue Squad at Three Chopt and Horsepen roads. "That's our best option at the moment," said Yob, though he noted that construction in the area may hinder access.
In the year ending this past June, the facility collected 438 tons of recycling, Yob said, which is 28 percent of the 1,561 tons brought to drop sites countywide. The second-busiest site, the Springfield landfill, got 160 tons.
Henrico maintains 13 other drop-off sites, but people travel far to go to the station at Patterson and Forest.
"We get a lot of people using it," Yob said. "They're not necessarily from Henrico County."
Surveys show that people from as far away as Louisa, Powhatan and Hanover counties bring waste to the site. About 95 percent of the material comes from homes.
Contact Lisa Crutchfield at (804) 649-6362 or
.
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Reader Reactions
Why in the world would anyone drive from as far away as Louisa to drop off recycling? Kinda defeats the point of trying to be environmentally friendlier, doesn’t it?
Also, as far as I know, Henrico’s curbside recycling program through CVWMA doesn’t cost residents anything, unlike Richmond.
Maybe I am just dumb, but it seems that if this recycle center is so popular, then maybe it should be replaced with 2 new centers. Recycling should be encouraged and making the drop-off process complicated discourages people from recycling.
As a city resident, we have recycle pickup once every 2 weeks. We pay a mandatory fee for this service. Few people take advantage of this service and with good reason. The waste management firm does a very poor job of collections. Frequently missing houses with materials for pick up. Leaving a trail of debris every time they come. Demanding that pick up take place in front of people’s houses instead of in the alley where the trash is collected. The concept is great but the company’s collections is a big deterrent to promoting recycling. I recycle. I take my own recycling to the station by DMV on Broad Street. Of course, once there, the collection bins are usually packed to the top with cans, bottles and cardboard spilling onto the ground. Maybe one day, the city will get a company to manage the program efficiently. Then again, they probably won’t.
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