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As a follow up to my last post about trying to recycle in Richmond, VA, I’d like to share with you my experience of what it took to do the right thing in this town.
As a recap, I live in downtown Richmond, Virginia. Finding a place to recycle my empty bottles and glass has turned into much more of an effort than it should be - even for a guy willing to go through the effort.
In my kitchen, an empty moving box temporally housed over one month’s worth of empty ginger beer glasses, wine bottles, water bottles, etc. I could no longer deny that it was time to time to get rid of it all and the trash dumpster was not an option.
I drive a VW coupe. It’s new and it’s clean and I didn’t want to chance dirty bottles flying around in my backseat, so I enlisted the help of my buddy and his pickup truck on a beautiful sunday afternoon to drive me to the closest recycling depot - about three miles away.
Turns out, this particular recycle location was closed on Sundays. In a totally non-intentional effort of making someone’s Monday start of worse than it needs to, I left my boxes at the gate. I figured if I brought them the 2.97 miles here, they could anchor the last .03.
Here’s a quick list of why this experience is a very poor reflection of Richmond’s recycling efforts.
- No convenient access within or around my building
- No convenient access within my block
- The need to travel by motor vehicle to deposit my recycling
- Recycling can be dirty so I had to ask a friend for help
- The nearest location was closed on the most convenient day for me (and I’m assuming several others) to toss their recycle.
I can deal with these “inconveniences” but the point is other people can not. People, especially when they are apathetic, take the easier solution. In this case, that means plastic and glass in the trash.
Here’s another Richmond Recycle folly. When I Google “Richmond Recycle,” the first two organic results are for Richmond, British Columbia and Richmond, UK. This wouldn’t be an issue except organic results are affected by my location. If I’m in Richmond, Virginia, my organic results should be filtered to reflect relevant Richmond, Virginia recycle pages - regardless of whether or not I type Virginia in my search query. Apparently, the presence of Richmond, Virginia recycle is so scarce on the internet that it still doesn’t show at the top.
That doesn’t give me confidence the situation is going to get any better anytime soon.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Chris,
I stumbled accross your blog while I was updating mine. I have a recycling collection company. I started it because I had no clue where I could recycle myself. I relocated from Providence, RI and was used to just putting at the end of my drive way every two weeks. Once I moved here, I placed my trash and recyclables out and nobody came to get them besides the racoons. I was able to get trash collection but couldn’t find anyone to recycle.
My company provides recycling services. We have a couple of programs that can service your recycling needs. Visit our website or email me and I could help you get started
Thanks
Damon