Henrico may impose annual $24 recycling fee

Henrico County officials soon may implement an annual $24 recycling fee on every residential dwelling in the county, as part of an effort to expand the county’s recycling efforts while overcoming financial shortfalls with the current program and preparing for costs that could rise even more in a few years.

The plan, presented Tuesday night to the Henrico Board of Supervisors, calls for the fee to be imposed in two $12-increments annually – once in June and again in December. It would be added onto the public utility bills of the county’s 97,000 or so customers, sent separately to another 6,200 or so households that aren’t utility customers and sent to the management companies of the 37,000 or so apartment units in Henrico, according to Henrico Finance Director Meghan Coates.

If approved by the board, the fee could take effect in June. Citizens would not be able to opt out of the fee.

All customers would receive a 96-gallon trash can-style recycling cart on wheels (pictured) by mid-2023 as part of the expanded efforts; new customers in the county are receiving those now, according to Coates. (About 10,000 current customers already have a 96-gallon cart, Henrico Public Utilities Director Bentley Chan told supervisors, and the cost to roll out another 90,000 or so in the coming years would approach $5 million – though grants would reduce the county’s required share to about $1.3 million.)

Henrico is the only major Richmond-area locality that doesn’t already impose a recycling fee; the new fee would be lower than those in place in Chesterfield, Richmond, Goochland and Hanover, which range between $2.66 and $3.33 per month, Coates said.

The fee is necessary, Coates and Chan told supervisors, because the county’s current program is costing the county money; during Fiscal Year 2020, which ended June 30, Henrico contributed nearly $2.5 million to the program but still lost more than $800,000.

If implemented, the fee would generate about $3.4 million annually – just about $56,000 more than the current program costs, Coates said.

But program expenses are expected to rise to $5.17 million in the coming fiscal year and higher the year after that, Coates told the Citizen – necessitating another source of revenue in addition to the $2.5 million that the county intends to continue contributing annually.

County officials expect program costs to jump even more dramatically – to about $6.77 million – by the time a new regional contract, yet to be negotiated, begins July 1, 2023.

Henrico and several other Central Virginia localities contract jointly with the Central Virginia Waste Management Authority, which provides a range of recycling services to each. In Henrico, some homes are eligible to receive curbside recycling pick-up twice monthly through the arrangement but others aren’t.

There also are 12 CVWMA drop-off recycling sites with 34 total containers located throughout the county, primarily at fire stations.

There’s uncertainty about what the next regional recycling contract might look like, since Chesterfield officials have wavered about whether to remain a part of it. The loss of one or more regional partners could increase the costs for those that remain, officials have said.

Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas told supervisors Tuesday that although there are options other than CVWMA, the agency has proven to be the most capable and affordable to date.

Until Fiscal Year 2017, the county was making money on its recycling efforts, Coates said; recycling companies paid about $20 per ton of materials. But after that, once Chinese firms stopped accepting many of the goods, a dramatic shift occurred. Now, she said, it costs Henrico about $30 per ton to recycle the materials.

“That’s a $50-per-ton swing that we experienced,” she said.

In Virginia, unless a locality has a population density of less than 100 people per square mile or an unemployment rate that’s more than 50% higher than the state average, it must have a recycling rate of at least 25%.