NORFOLK, Va. — Norfolk residents express the need for continued curbside recycling at the city council meeting on Wednesday.
The city has a contract with NFC Recycling that provides curbside recycling pickup. The contract ends in July 2024.
During the city council meeting, residents said they prefer curbside recycling services over recycling drop-off centers.
The city surveyed over 3000 residents. The top concerns are environmental impact, waste stream contamination and reliability of service.
97 percent of residents surveyed said they use blue recycling containers.
City officials said there would be an increase in fees to continue curbside recycling. 86 percent of residents surveyed said an increase in fees would be appropriate to continue the curbside recycling program.
"I pushed really hard to maybe do drop-off centers and we were looking at maybe 6 drop off centers, fully staffed, " Richard Broad, Director of Public Works, said. "The residents clearly don’t like that. They liked putting things in the blue bin. We had a huge number of them say they use it. They recycle every chance they get. So we kind of squashed that idea."
The Director of PublicWorks said they hope to move forward with curbside recycling.