Fairfax County Joins Northern Virginia Glass Recovery Program

Fairfax County has asked its residents to stop putting glass bottles out at the curb for recycling anymore in Fairfax County. Fairfax Country joins other counties, including Arlington and Prince William, as well as the city of Alexandria in the Northern Virginia Glass Recovery Program — known as The Purple Can Club. Eric Forbes, director of recycling, engineering and environmental compliance for the county government, said, "Glass will no longer be part of the curbside collection program. Glass has been a challenge for a number of years. It can contaminate the other valuable materials, including plastic bottles and jugs, cartons, metal food and beverage cans, and mixed paper and cardboard." According to wtop.com, "Forbes said part of the problem is that glass often breaks during handling, which made it difficult to keep separated from other recyclables, and too heavy to transport cost-effectively. In addition, the market for glass wasn’t as strong as anticipated." Forbes said, "Glass wasn’t getting recycled at the level we wanted in Fairfax. So we built a processing facility [in Lorton] that does 20 tons an hour." As per wtop.com, "So as of Tuesday, residents have two options for getting rid of their glass bottles in Fairfax County: They can bring them to one of 21 regional purple glass-only recycling containers, or they can toss them in the trash."

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Maryam N. is a Senior Writer at Nesbitt Realty. She is an expert on Fairfax County. Maryam has also worked previously as a geologist. She is a foodie and enjoys cooking and exploring new restaurants.