ROANOKE, Va. – This story is part of a series called “Solutionaries”, where we set out to explore innovative ways people are working to fight problems we’re all facing. Inflation, affordable housing, the climate crisis, and much more. You can find hours of stories here.
What happens after you drop off your recycling or it gets picked up from your house? We’re taking you inside the process and explaining why it’s not always easy.
“We find tires, rocks, dirt. Hair, you would not you couldn’t imagine how many pounds of hair extensions we pull out every day. Diapers, soiled diapers transmissions, engine blocks using blocks. you name it,” said Billy Basham, the President of the Virginia Recycling Association.
He’s also the Director of Facilities for RDS – Recycling and Disposal Solutions of Virginia in Roanoke. Basham oversees the giant facility where eighty tons of material is processed every day.
Trucks come in, dump everything on the floor, and then the sorting process begins.
The recycling plant is full of belts, machines, and robots that help.
But it starts with us.
While we were there, we saw a bag where the words “recycle me” were printed on the side.
“That is the catch-22 of recycling. It says ‘Recycle me’” explained Basham.
But RDS can’t recycle it because it would take too long to collect enough of those to sell to someone. Basham says 90% of waste in the recycle stream is recyclable but you have to pay attention to what can be recycled where you live.
RDS accepts many types of materials like paper, phone books, cans and plastics and two from all over the region including places like Montgomery County, Salem and Roanoke. You can see the list of things they accept here.
“One of the biggest challenges we have is good clean material in a bag, tied up. So why is this a problem for us? Well, if we don’t open this bag from the beginning before we load it into our system, the bag is just going to go through the system, and everything in it is going to become invaluable because it’s encapsulated in a bag,” explained Basham.
At the start of the processing line inside the plant are people who try to catch all the things that can’t be recycled. Plastic bags, film that’s wrapped around cases of water and the other weird stuff that people throw in recycling like aluminum siding.
Basham says the thought process people go through is wrong.
“The guy’s going, ‘What am I going to do with leaves? Leaves come from trees. Trees make pulp. Mills want pulp to make paper. Therefore these leaves are paper. It’s recyclable.’ No, it’s not,” he said.
Then it travels through the many different screening processes where it gets dropped into the right spot. The same materials are then bailed into big blocks to sell off.
When Basham looks at those big bails that can be worth $1,000 he sees money.
“I’m a businessman,” he said.
The stuff that gets weeded out that’s not recycling goes to the landfill. But that costs taxpayers more money because the cost gets passed back to cities and counties.
So if you recycle right from the beginning it helps everyone.
“I just don’t think there’s enough continuous education. I think everybody wants to recycle program but the responsibility of a good recycling program is continuous education,” said Basham. “I firmly believe too that a lot of the reasons that folks don’t know is because recycling programs have transitioned over the years. I came from the city of Roanoke and we changed what we recycled several times and getting that out to the public is challenging.”
Recycling right saves everyone a lot of headaches and taxpayer money. You’ll find a list to trash cleanup days and other resources here.
You’ll also find an explainer on how to ‘recycle right’ in this link.
If your city or county doesn’t recycle certain items through its recycling program, you may be able to find other resources or organizations to recycle them.
Sustainable Roanoke holds recycling events and lists where you can take things like coffee pods, straws and more.
This story is part of a new program at WSLS 10, Solutionaries. Solutions offer hope and that’s the belief of Solutionaries, a show from our parent company, Graham Media Group, focusing on those who are taking on some of our biggest challenges. Each episode focuses on effective responses to problems and offers viewers ways they can join the effort for positive change.
We tackle one topic at a time, highlighting problems many of us are dealing with and the solutions that are out there. The solution could be in our backyard or something else that’s working across the country.
You can check out our story on fighting inflation with creative ways to keep food costs down from March here and urban heat islands in Virginia and their deadly effects from February here.
You’ll see new Solutionaries episodes each month here on WSLS.com, and on your go-to streaming device using the 10 News Now app. And, we’d love you to subscribe on YouTube!