Ask for Stronger Action on the County’s Zero Waste Plan

Arlington County is poised to adopt a new 20-year Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP). The new plan must be adopted by June 30, 2024 so we expect the County Board to advertise the updated plan at its May meeting and to adopt the new plan in June. This gives citizens a rare opportunity to influence the future direction of waste reduction and recycling in Arlington, While the plan has many good initiatives, it settles for modest improvements rather than making changes that could substantially reduce the negative environmental impact of Arlington’s solid waste. 

First, the plan should focus more on waste reduction than on recycling and should acknowledge that waste disposal creates a large amount of greenhouse gases (GHG). Currently, the SWMP looks only at the GHGs that are generated by the operations of the trucks and facilities that process our trash. The report also should consider the carbon embedded in our wastes, especially food and plastics.

Ask the Arlinton County Board to say that our climate crisis requires the county to consider the GHG emissions of all its actions and it shouldn’t wait until 2044 to focus on reducing such emissions from our waste stream. 

Second, Arlington’s government should show some leadership in reducing the amount of waste we produce. In 2015, the County Board adopted a resolution that says, “the [Arlington County] Board understands that local government should lead by example and that waste prevention, reuse, recycling, and composting are waste management strategies that conserve our finite natural resources while reducing environmental impacts.” However, the SWMP draft prepared by Arlington County staff ignores this objective, stating “County facilities and schools are considered part of the County’s commercial generating sector and are subject to the trash and recycling requirements for those properties as provided in the County Code.”

Ask the Arlington County Board to remain faithful to its 9-year-old resolution and require the county government to show some leadership in waste reduction.

Third, all the construction activity in Arlington has created a great deal of construction and demolition (C&D) waste. We don’t know how much of this type of waste we create, because Arlington doesn’t regulate this waste and makes no effort to control or quantify it. However, EPA says that, nationwide, C&D waste is more than twice as large as the rest of the waste stream from municipalities. We should not ignore this potentially huge amount of waste just because the state of Virginia doesn’t require that we regulate it.

Ask the County Board to direct county staff to complete a study of C&D waste, including estimates of its volume, and to look for best practices to reduce or recycle as much C&D waste as possible.

In addition, you can play a role in promoting more effective recycling within Arlington. There have been persistent reports that the contractors handling single-family trash and recycling sometimes put recyclable material in with trash. Many residents of multi-family housing report that their buildings do not have adequate recycling facilities or may lack such facilities altogether. Nothing will discourage citizens from recycling more quickly than to see their efforts canceled by contractors handling their trash. If you ever notice such behavior, please report it! Only a substantial volume of such reports will spur the county to correct these situations.

Single-family homeowners can report a problem by clicking on “Report a Problem” on the County’s home web page at https://arlingtonva.qscend.com/311/request/add. After giving a location, choose the Residential Curbside Collections option to report a problem.

If you live in multifamily housing, your trash isn’t collected by county contractors, but these contractors are regulated by the county government. You can report that your building is not recycling properly through the Customer Contact Center at https://www.arlingtonva.us/Government/Programs/Recycling-and-Trash.