ECO411 is Back in a New Venue!

Welcome to the inaugural post of ECO411 on Fredericksburg Patch! Follow this blog for timely info about recycling, pollution prevention, composting, water quality, and other enviro-news you can use. I am writing on behalf of the Rappahannock Regional Solid Waste Management Board (R-Board), but plan to include pertinent info from and links to wildlife advocates, organic farms, and other like-minded organizations.

Just a little about who we are: The R-Board operates the Regional Landfill on Eskimo Hill Road in Stafford, the Belman Road Recycling Center in Fredericksburg, and several drop-off recycling centers around the county and city.

The R-Board’s customers are our citizens and trash hauling companies and we strive to handle waste in the most environmentally sound manner possible. However, that is not all we do!

The Regional Landfill has achieved an E3 certification (out of 4) in the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s Virginia Environmental Excellence Program, a voluntary program promoting environmental management systems and pollution prevention. The R-Board is pursuing E4 and expects to meet the requirements during the next reporting cycle. The R-Board partnered with Ameresco, Inc. in 2008 to capture landfill gas and put it to the beneficial use of generating electricity. With two methane-burning engines, just over 2MW of electricity is continuously fed into the grid, equating what approximately 1300 homes use in one year.

The R-Board has switched to single-stream recycling for household food containers and paper products in recent years too. This has dramatically increased our recycling output and has helped to increase our region’s recycling rate to 56.8 percent for 2010, an 11 percent increase over 2009. To date over 430 people have learned how to compost through Backyard Composting 101. This spring the first class of Master Composters graduated with a commitment to volunteer 30 hours of outreach to the community teaching others how to compost and recycle organic waste at home.

Thanks for reading along! Please feel free to share the post and let me know if you would like me to cover any specific topics. Happy Recycling!