Community

Loudoun County clarifies what can be recycled — and what can’t

Yes, this is slightly outside our usual new restaurant openings and shopping center news, but sometimes you publish something as a public service.

Recycling should be a goal for everyone, but what exactly you can recycle is sometimes murky. Styrofoam? Milk cartons? Plastic grocery bags? Pizza boxes? Loudoun County sent out a reminder today in the form of their “Recycling Guide” brochure. The Burn has reproduced it below, page by page, so we can all know — once and for all — what can be recycled and what cannot.

If you’re a hardcore recycler, they also have a list with even more details that goes item by item. You can see that document here.

9 Comments
  1. Libby Mari 3 years ago

    Thanks so much for the recycling info – very helpful.

  2. Kelly Ann Hess 3 years ago

    Thank you for publishing this document, I may not have seen it otherwise!

  3. D.A. Trappert 3 years ago

    I can’t recycle plastic bags? SERIOUSLY??? It sort of makes the whole process worthless. Maybe I’ll just stop recycling altogether.

    • Chris Dietrich 3 years ago

      You can do that at the grocery store

  4. Ed Cimino 3 years ago

    This is what turns people off to recycling. We want cardboard, but not if it’s a pizza box? We want paper, but only if it’s not shredded? So if one piece of cheese is stuck to the pizza box, and that fouls up the entire works? Really?

    • D.A.Trappert 3 years ago

      And my understanding is that if you put all your recycling in a big plastic bag, so it won’t blow all over the neighborhood, they won’t even bother to open it. It just goes into the trash. In Ashburn Village, if I used the recycling and garbage cans they provide, I wouldn’t have room in my garage for anything else!

  5. Trace H. 3 years ago

    This is very helpful, thanks! The recycling page on our service provider’s website is somewhat vague, and I’ve tried to reach out to them for details, but no response. This public service announcement clears it up nicely. Much appreciated!

  6. Kyle Dumouchelle 3 years ago

    Hopefully this is well distributed and they stick to this. The county seems to constantly change their mind on what they accept and what they don’t. I remember they once said about a year or two ago that you couldn’t recycle laminated boxes like Cereal Boxes, but they don’t even reference that here.

  7. James Gill 3 years ago

    I watch the trash collectors in our community take both trash and recycle cans and dump them into the truck simultaneously. How is that a good recycling program? I’m in Loudoun Valley II

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