Residents of Charlottesville, Va., are able to take advantage of a free mulch program offered by the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority. The program started as a way for residents to reuse the tons of vegetation collected each year, which benefited residents and the Solid Waste Authority by diverting organic waste from the landfill and then turning it into something useful.
The program started with residents paying for the mulch but has evolved into a completely free program.
“Efforts to divert organic waste from the landfill extend back to times when we operated a landfill on our site,” Phillip McKalips, Rivanna Solid Waste Authority solid waste director, explained. “It continued through the period when we transitioned to transfer station operations and were no longer landfilling at our site…