Lynchburg, VA Trash & Recycling: Recycling Requirements (2026)

Sec. 2-4(d) frames recycling separation as part of the city's broader curbside preparation rules for solid waste. The stated purpose is explicit: reducing the flow of solid waste disposed of at the RSA (Region 2000 Services Authority) facility and promoting the recovery of useful resources. The ordinance directs that recyclable material should be taken to the proper recycling centers, and gives examples of what counts, aluminum and steel cans, newspaper, glass, mixed paper and some plastics, without limiting the category to just those items. The operative mandate is narrower than the general encouragement: any recyclable material that is accepted pursuant to a city recycling program, whether that program is publicly or privately administered, shall be separated from other solid waste for pickup, with the specific separation criteria left to the city manager or a designee to establish.

That delegation means the exact sorting rules, single-stream versus multi-bin, accepted plastic resin numbers, and so on, live in administrative program guidance rather than the code section itself, but the underlying legal obligation to separate accepted recyclables from trash is set in the ordinance. Because the RSA facility is a joint regional operation rather than a city-only landfill, Sec. 2-4(d)'s reference to reducing RSA-bound waste ties Lynchburg's recycling rule directly to the shared regional waste-management system serving the city and its neighboring localities.