Virginia

Waste and Recycling Statistics

With an estimated population of 7,882,590, the Commonwealth of Virginia disposed of 19,559,757.69 tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) in 2009. However, Virginians were responsible for only 64 percent of the waste handled in their state. Maryland, New York, and the District of Columbia account for 30 percent of MSW going into landfills in the commonwealth. Virginia stands ahead of the U.S. average in capturing the value of MSW by recycling 38.5 percent of it and sending another 7 percent to waste-to-energy (WTE) plants to be burned to produce electricity. In the case of northern Virginia, Fairfax, Arlington, and Alexandria counties were running out of space for waste disposal so they chose to open WTE facilities, rather than export their trash. This has reduced landfill needs by 75 percent and increased post-collection recycling while producing enough energy to provide electricity for 100,000 homes. Impressive as these numbers are in relation to the national average of 24 percent recycling and 69 percent heading to landfills, Virginians produce well over the national average of refuse at 1.6 tons per capita.

As might be expected, recycling rates are highest in the more densely populated areas of northern Virginia (where density levels reach 800 inhabitants per square mile, four times the state average); Richmond and Fredericksburg reached recycling rates of over 40 percent in 2009.

One notable exception is the Hampton Roads/Tidewater Area (Norfolk, Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Virginia Beach), which has shown a [Page 966]steep decline in recycling in the first decade of the 21st century. Most of the urban centers have single-stream recycling collection, resulting in a 57 percent increase in commingled capture rates. Virginia mandates a 25-percent primary materials recycled rate for all density areas of 100 people per square mile and a 15-percent rate for localities more sparsely populated.

MSW collection and disposal are handled on a county-by-county basis. Virginia has 200 waste facilities, including the Pentagon, Norfolk Navy Yard, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). These disposal facilities send three-fourths of the managed MSW to landfills, with the remainder incinerated, recycled, or composted. Recycling and composting may be managed by a private company or a public service authority using one of the more than 324 recycling and nine composting facilities in Virginia. The Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Environmental Quality collects data for MSW and recycling on an annual cycle in two separate reports.

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