A three-month-old pilot program to divert food scraps from Arlington’s waste stream is paying dividends, the county government said Sept. 23.
More than 11,000 pounds of food waste has been collected since the launch of the Solid Waste Bureau’s pilot program in early July, officials said. Over 1,000 pounds of food scraps and food-soiled paper are being composted in a typical week.
Spring cleaning isn’t just for the indoors here in Arlington.
The county started its annual spring street sweeping today in several neighborhoods. Street sweeping occurs four times throughout the year, twice in the spring and twice in the fall.
Arlington’s recycling rate is trending up — but there is still a ways to go to reach the county’s goal of diverting nearly all trash from incinerators and landfills by 2038.
In 2021, the recycling rate, which now includes the county’s new food scrap collection program, was 52.4%, according to Solid Waste Bureau Chief Erik Grabowsky. Last year’s rate is projected to be 54%.
Arlington County has removed two apparently “abandoned” trash cans in Pentagon City.
Earlier this week, a resident posted on social media scenes of overflowing trash cans near the intersection of 12th Street S. and S. Eads Street, across the street from the Pentagon City Whole Foods.
Cool fall mornings mean leaf collection season is near.
And Arlington’s Department of Environmental Services is reminding homeowners collecting their leaves and cleaning out their gardens to use only paper yard waste bags.
If Arlington County collects your yard waste, you can now add food scraps to your green organics cart starting this week.
This collection service, which started on Monday, is now part of the county’s regular weekly trash, recycling and yard waste collection routes. Food scraps and yard waste will be delivered together to a professional composting facility in Prince William County.
(Updated at 3:50 p.m.) Arlington County will start collecting residents’ food scraps on Labor Day.
Residents receiving county curbside collection services — mostly those in single-family homes and townhouses — will be able to toss unused food into their green yard waste bins and bring them to the curb on collection day, starting Monday, Sept. 6. Those scraps will be composted in Prince William County and returned to Arlington as soil.
Arlington County will be sending its yard waste and food scraps to Prince William County.
At Saturday’s County Board meeting, the board approved a new agreement to send organic compost to a new state-of-the-art composting facility in Prince William County.
Arlington County is turning trash into treasure by growing thousands of pounds of fresh produce for a local food bank using compost from residents.
Last February, Arlington’s Solid Waste Bureau began a pilot program to create compost from residents’ food scraps. Now some of that compost is coming full circle and being used in some of the local gardens that supply fresh produce for Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC).
Arlington County is asking residents to trash glass, following a vote by the County Board last night.
Board members passed an amendment to the county code allowing the County Manager to delete materials from the list of what Arlington recycles. The move was made to allow County Manager Mark Schwartz to remove glass from the list after officials said it had become too expensive to recycle.
Get ready to start raking in the leaves: the county’s leaf collection starts next Monday (Nov. 12) for some neighborhoods and continues through mid-December.
Look for yellow signs posted three to seven days ahead of the first pass and then orange signs for the second one. Leaves should be at the curb at the start of the collection window and stay there until they are collected.
It’s the season for spring cleaning, and Arlington’s street sweeping service is set to resume today (Monday).
The sweeping service runs from April through October in an effort to “reduce stormwater pollution in our local streams, the Potomac River, and the Chesapeake Bay,” according to an Arlington County Solid Waste Bureau press release.
