ROANOKE, Va. – A fire at the Recycling and Disposal Solutions Facility in Roanoke left nearly $100,000 in damages. According to the Fire Marshal’s investigation, they determined the cause to be accidental, but now that fire is having impacts on recycling programs in our area.
Joe Bedetto, the President of RDS, says the plant is not functional and they don’t have an estimated time on when it will be back open.
Roanoke County has temporarily suspended its recycling program. They posted a notice on their website saying “Due to the damage sustained in the fire, RDS is currently unable to accept recycled materials from Roanoke County.”
According to the Director of General Services for the County, Ashley King, this is the facility where RDS takes single steam recycling.
King says, “We have five locations here in Roanoke County, and unfortunately, we were unable to empty those trailers on Friday due to the fire. At that point in time, they were not quite sure what they would be able to do with us as far as an alternative.”
County staff said they are working on a different location to take their recycled materials. They decided to pull the trailers because when they are full, sometimes people leave recycled materials on the foundation, creating litter. King says they hope to have the problem resolved in 24 to 48 hours.
“Our trailers are single-stream recycling trailers. This means you can put in cardboard, paper, plastics, and aluminum. Whereas their other site only accepts paper and cardboard. So I think from that perspective; hopefully, we can work something out to go there,” says King
Roanoke City has had to pivot where they take their recycling. They posted that the City of Roanoke will continue to receive uninterrupted recycling collection services. However, the Solid Waste Management Division will deliver collected materials to the RDS recycling facility on Enon Road.
Mike Stevens, with the City of Salem, says all of their recycling bins are still open, but they plan on storing collected materials until RDS is back open.