FAIRFAX CITY, VA — The Fairfax City Council on Tuesday unanimously adopted a 20-year solid waste management plan that city officials say is needed to control rising disposal costs, increase recycling and prepare for regional landfill capacity constraints.
The plan, known as the Solid Waste Management Plan, or “SWMP,” covers 2026 through 2046 and includes 54 actions organized under five goals: effective government operations, education and outreach, source reduction, recycling and organics. It was developed by city staff, consultants RRS and a community advisory group after an extensive public engagement process.
“We are pleased to be here tonight to present the five year update to the city solid waste management plan, which is being considered for adoption tonight,” said Stephanie Cooper, the city’s sustainability program manager. She said staff, community members and consultants had worked for months to update the document.
Helen Lee, an RRS consultant, told the council the SWMP is a “long term planning document spanning across 20 years” that “guides how the City manages all aspects of its waste and establishes goals and initiatives that shape future infrastructure decisions, informs programs and services, directs education and outreach efforts and support budget and policy decisions that keep services efficient, equitable, environmentally responsible.”
Lee said the city’s population is projected to grow from about 24,000 in 2020 to nearly 40,000 by 2050, which will put additional pressure on the waste system. Under a “status quo” scenario with no new interventions, total municipal solid waste is projected to rise from approximately 19,000 tons to more than 20,000 tons by 2050, she said.
A 2024 waste composition study for Fairfax County found that 37 percent of the waste stream is recyclable material such as paper, plastic, glass and metal, while 33 percent is organics, including food and yard waste. Lee said that “gap between what we dispose and what we divert represents the opportunity.”
Lee also highlighted cost pressures. Since 2007, the city’s disposal cost for municipal solid waste has risen 73 percent, from $52 per ton to $90 per ton, she said. The approved disposal rate at the Fairfax County facility for fiscal 2027 is $98 per ton, and county budget projections show it rising to $141 per ton by fiscal 2031, a 78 percent increase over five years.
“These escalating costs make waste reduction and diversion not just an environmental imperative, but a fiscal one,” Lee said.
Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality requires the city to maintain at least a 25 percent recycling rate; Fairfax reported a 39 percent rate in calendar year 2024.
Lee said the project team recorded roughly 50,000 “engagement touch points” through surveys, events, mailers and online outreach. Nearly 92 percent of survey respondents said they actively recycle, and about 91.5 percent expressed support for efforts to increase recycling, she said. Residents most frequently asked for additional public recycling bins, more convenient glass recycling, food waste composting, clear and multilingual recycling instructions, greater transparency about how recyclables are processed and more specialty drop off options.
The council’s vote followed a series of questions focused on plastics, food waste, financing and community involvement.
Councilmember Tom Peterson asked for “a little bit more detail around one or two things — plastics,” calling it “a key area.”
Lee said the plan recognizes recycling as a market driven system where “technologies are evolving and changing over time,” and pointed to a new materials recovery facility in Elkridge, Maryland, where “the city is sending materials” and which now has “22 optical sorters, and are recycling more materials than ever with the help of robots and AI.” She said staff will encourage residents to reduce plastic use through education and outreach.
Peterson also pressed for “a particular strategy around food waste in the commercial environment in addition to the residential environment,” citing a restaurant throwing out unsold pizzas at closing time.
“Food Waste Reduction, I think, really starts with education and outreach and also understanding for businesses that there are protections around liability for food donation,” Lee said. She noted that in 2026 the General Assembly authorized localities, by ordinance, to require food waste recycling for “large quantity generators like a restaurant or, you know, stadiums or something like that,” a power the city “might choose to exercise.”
On potential revenue, Peterson asked whether the city could “convert things that are currently really just a cost center and a cost stream into a revenue stream.” Lee said one strategy in the plan is to “evaluate … alternative funding mechanisms,” including whether the solid waste fee should be handled through “a special purpose revenue fund or enterprise fund.”
Councilmember Stacy Hall focused on school composting and residential organics, acknowledging challenges in working within Fairfax County Public Schools but urging the city to “take a different stand” at its own schools. She also described a household “freezer” approach to storing food scraps to reduce odors.
Cooper said one near term project is “a residential waste and recycling assessment,” with composting as a key focus. “We’re looking at options like curbside composting, adding additional composting centers, etc.,” Cooper said, adding staff expect to outline a schedule for environmental sustainability special projects in June and currently anticipate working on the assessment in the next fiscal year.
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Hall also asked about expanding glass recycling beyond the regional “purple bins.”
“As far as the residential assessment glass, we’re looking at glass construction and demolition, debris and yard waste,” Cooper said, adding that the city is reviewing “a variety of curbside services” and “how we can improve them.”
Councilmember Stacey Hardy-Chandler praised the document, saying she “read through the actions” and found the “50 plus actions” to be “very clear, doable.” She said “focusing on the education and outreach” is about changing “mindset” and “really shifting our mindset even more” across the community.
“One of the things that I’d like for you to elaborate on a little bit more is … how to foster communitywide, ownership of these efforts and ownership of the plan,” she said, calling for residents to “be ambassadors for these efforts in order to amplify the impact.”
Lee said the outreach process and the city’s Solid Waste Advisory Committee showed “enthusiasm and excitement” among residents, businesses and institutions, including George Mason University.
“Behavior change really helps when it doesn’t just come from the government city staff,” Lee said. “It definitely helps when neighbors nudge gently to others, and in an educated education way.”
Cooper said the city wants to use “recycling champions” and volunteers at events such as Fall Festival and the July Fourth parade to help people sort trash, recycling and compost and to “reduce waste and empower them and also work together to spread the word.”
Councilmember Anthony Amos questioned why a formal neighborhood champion program is listed in the plan as a long-term goal.
“It is a capacity item right now,” Cooper said, noting the city lacks a volunteer manager. “Some smaller volunteer initiatives that are one-time events could be more feasible with the staff capacity that we have,” she said, while an ongoing volunteer network would require additional capacity. She also said the city has funding for a commercial solid waste and recycling assessment that would emphasize “support and education” for multifamily and commercial properties, including toolkits and printed materials.
Amos said he was concerned that language around multifamily enforcement “seems to be more centered on enforcement … and doesn’t really emphasize assistance to the same degree,” though he acknowledged much of the support work is implied and would be fleshed out in program design.
In response to questions from Peterson about storm drains, illegal dumping and water quality, Cooper said the environment and sustainability division works “very closely” with the stormwater utility to share messages such as “only rain down the drain” in newsletters and social media, and to support school and scout projects to mark storm drains. She also noted problems with improper battery disposal.
Assistant City Manager and Chief Financial Officer Juan Carlos “JC” Martinez said illegal dumping of motor oil into storm drains is rare but taken seriously.
“Typically, we get out there right away. Code Enforcement helps us. They’re responsible for cleaning. They’re responsible for all the cleanup, and this could be some huge fines,” Martinez said. “Doesn’t happen that often. I think in the last five years, it might have happened once, and we were on it right away.”
Martinez said many gas stations accept used oil and that the city also has “oil recycling at the property yard.”
He added that most debris entering waterways is “trash” and said the city’s stormwater projects include designing outfalls so that debris “stays within the outfall and doesn’t go downstream” and can be removed.
Peterson tied the discussion back to the SWMP, saying residents need to understand that “if waste, solid waste, isn’t well managed, it will oftentimes end up in the creek.”
Martinez said the city’s ability to control costs will depend partly on tightening its solid waste ordinance.
“There’s a lot of loopholes in our ordinance, which, as they talked about, the tipping fees go up. There’s more and more people looking to exploit the loopholes,” he said. “The City of Fairfax has a reputation of taking everything so that, I think, is the key, as far as the cost part is tightening up our ordinance.”
Mayor Catherine Read said commercial glass recycling is a recurring concern among city restaurants whose haulers collect trash and recyclables under private contracts.
“I’ve had restaurants ask me about glass recycling because they go through so much broken bar ware and wine bottles and just so much glass gets dumped and carried away,” Read said, asking whether a city glass program could also serve businesses.
Lee said a planned residential and commercial recycling assessment would “address some of those challenges for glass recycling.” She added that “some of the recycling facilities are starting to consider putting the glass back into their sink into their blue recycling bins,” which the city would evaluate as part of future work.
Read also recounted a site visit to the Elkridge materials recovery facility and said, “It is completely awesome,” calling it “amazing” to see the facility’s artificial intelligence and sorting systems.
Public Testimony In Support Of The Plan
During public comment, Colleen Reagan, a Zero Waste Mason program manager at George Mason University and member of the SWMP Advisory Council, endorsed the plan and highlighted alignment with Mason’s “Patriot Pack Out” program.
“Patriot Pack Out, collects thousands of pounds of usable donations, such as clothing, home wear, non-perishable food supplies, and redistributes them for free to Mason Patriots, local community members and nonprofit organizations,” Reagan said, adding the city’s “proactive, community driven approach” gives her confidence the plan will deliver a “more efficient, equitable and environmentally responsible local waste system.”
Diana Gibson, a member of the advisory committee who lives in the Foxcroft Colony neighborhood, also spoke in favor and urged more education around fall leaf management to reduce nutrient pollution and protect invertebrates, including fireflies. She suggested more “leave the leaves on site” messaging.
Gibson pointed to “a really exciting initiative” in Louisiana where pulverized glass is used in sandbags for ecosystem restoration and flood control and said similar glass reuse could be considered locally.
Resident Amy Anspa, of University Drive, urged the city to implement municipal curbside composting to complement existing trash and recycling services.
“Sixty percent of overall food waste ends up in landfills, and 96 percent of household food waste ends up in landfills,” Anspa said. “This is simply because people don’t have an easy way to dispose of it in a responsible way.”
Anspa told the council she composts in her backyard but that winter conditions made it difficult, forcing her to put food scraps into the trash, and that the current drop off compost site at City Hall is not convenient for many families. She suggested adding a “third bin” for organics and said curbside service would “take out a lot of the yuck factor.”
After closing the public hearing, the council voted 6–0 to adopt the resolution approving the updated Solid Waste Management Plan. No councilmember spoke in opposition.
“It positions the city to manage rising costs, meet our state mandates, exceed recycling targets and deliver on the sustainability goals our residents have made clear that they support,” Lee said, as she concluded the staff presentation.
In a separate action later in the meeting, the council unanimously approved an ordinance and bond resolution authorizing up to $11 million in sewer system revenue bonds to finance capital costs for the city’s sewer system.
Martinez said the borrowing will support projects outlined in the wastewater fund’s capital plan and will be placed through the Virginia Resources Authority summer 2026 pooled financing program.
A review of the wastewater fund “confirmed the necessity to finance a portion of its capital soar projects by issuing bonds,” Martinez said. He told the council the VRA option was “the most efficient and cost effective approach.”
The net revenues of the city’s sewer system will be pledged as backing for the bonds. Representatives from the city’s financial advisor, Davenport and Company, and bond counsel Hunton Andrews Kurth attended the meeting.
No members of the public spoke during the hearing on the bond ordinance, and the council approved the measure on a 6–0 roll call vote.
Cooper said staff will return in June to discuss schedules for environmental sustainability projects, including the residential waste and recycling assessment. The SWMP also contemplates tightening the city’s solid waste ordinance, evaluating funding structures, expanding composting access and developing volunteer and neighborhood champion programs as staff capacity and resources allow.
Read said she believes the city’s “very engaged, very environmentally savvy residents and businesses” will be key to shifting how Fairfax residents think about trash, recycling and reuse.
“Anything we can do as part of this is, in the long term, going to benefit the city,” she said.
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