Curbside recycling suggested

By Preston Knight - pknight@nvdaily.com

NEW MARKET -- A presentation to get town officials thinking about offering curbside recycling services will be made to Town Council's public works committee Tuesday night.

For more than a year, Nathan and Melodie May have led a free service in the Pleasant View subdivision, collecting recyclable materials from about 30 households biweekly and taking them to a bin managed by Shenandoah County at the New Market Community Center. May said he would like to see an extension of this that is not volunteer-led, and his presentation Tuesday will simply be an attempt to entice the committee members into giving townwide recycling services a look.

"It's just a proposal," he said. "I don't want people to think we decided to do it or don't do it. .... There's a wonderful opportunity in place."

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 6:45 p.m.

Residents can currently recycle by taking items to the bin at the community center. Town Manager Evan Vass said people like the flexibility of being able to drop off materials at any time.

But the Mays have also found many people who like the convenience of pickup coming to them. For that to take place throughout New Market, however, May realizes there is a cost, and elected officials must determine if it's worth it.

Vass said the topic has not been discussed in several years, and Tuesday should be the start of a new dialogue on the matter. Last year, as the Mays got started on their efforts, then-Town Manager Chris Boies said New Market was keeping a watch on Strasburg, which had just started a curbside program.

A report released this summer states that Strasburg had recycled more than 250 tons of materials since March 2009 that otherwise would have ended up in the Shenandoah County landfill. Residents pay an additional $2.49 per month for the service and can purchase bins for $10.

May said landfill operations manager Brad Dellinger has started a recycling effort around Edinburg as well. One benefit of such an outreach is that people are better educated on what can be recycled, he added.

There is still a ways to go to make recycling second nature for residents, though. May said he conducted a poll in the spring of households he visits and asked whether they would continue recycling if the free service went away. Only half of the people said they would.

"It's all about having something quick and easy, accessible," May said. "That's why we started it. We never had intentions to offer it for the entire town of New Market."