Shenandoah County does not recycle glass.
A local paper reports that our county no longer crushes glass. The landfill still takes in our glass bottles and jars, but instead of recycling them they break them up with a bulldozer and spread the shards over layers of garbage to keep vultures from feeding off it. Apparently the birds don't like getting cut with sharp glass so they go elsewhere.
Shenandoah County used to have a glass crushing machine but it broke down so they sold it to Page County (who fixed it and used it).
Now I am a fairly faithful recycler. I rinse out jars, bottles, and cans, separate and store them, and drive to the recycling bins every few weeks. We don't have curbside pickup of recyclables here.
I've long had some doubts about whether recycling really saves resources when we have to drive an extra eight miles just to put it in dumpsters. And washing the containers uses water (which takes energy to purify and dispose of) and electricity, so the only way I am really doing any good is if the materials get recycled very efficiently. Plus supposedly we are saving landfill space. But not with glass, it seems. It is going in the county landfill.
Well, I may continue to recycle my clean glass, such as Perrier bottles. But I don't see any reason to wash out anything that takes hot water or detergent anymore. Jars that held peanut butter, kim-chee, or even maple syrup will go straight in the trash.
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