The Roanoke Times

Recycling receptacles are placed outside Lane Stadium. Glass recycling options for Blacksburg restaurants and bars dwindled in 2004 when Bob's Refuse Service ended its seven-day-a-week trash hauling contracts with most downtown businesses.

BLACKSBURG -- Every night in one of Virginia's "Coolest Cities," restaurant employees around town toss hundreds of pounds of glass, not into a recycling bin, but into the trash.

There's no exact count of the volume of glass bottles -- many of them beer containers -- that go into the local waste stream every year. But Bill Nygaard, co-owner of Bogen's Steakhouse, estimates his restaurant throws away up to 40 pounds of glass a day. John Bissey, manager of the London Underground, said glass bottles account for about 40 percent of the pub's overall waste.

Glass recycling options for Blacksburg restaurants and bars dwindled in 2004 when the locally owned Bob's Refuse Service ended its seven-day-a-week trash hauling contracts with most downtown businesses. Along with curbside trash pickup, Bob's had also collected recyclables.

Blacksburg officials stepped in, helping businesses negotiate a trash collection deal with Waste Management of Virginia, the town's residential garbage contractor. The town also provided a central trash-bin site in the Armory parking lot at Draper Road that includes a drop-off site for cardboard recycling.

But glass recycling was no longer offered. Where it was offered, such recycling often proved too expensive for many businesses.

Of several restaurant owners and managers interviewed, only one, the London Underground, today recycles its glass bottles. The reason: Bob's Refuse still collects the Underground's trash and also picks up glass, Bissey said.

Nygaard said he would like to recycle glass, too, and having to throw it away is disappointing. After all, the restaurant pays $40 a month to recycle its cardboard, another large restaurant waste item. The owners haul aluminum to a recycle center and have installed energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs throughout the restaurant. Like most eateries, Bogen's fryer oil is also recycled.

But Bogen's trash company doesn't offer glass recycling at all, Nygaard said.

Blacksburg officials, who pledged in 2006 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to pre-1990 levels and agreed to join the Sierra Club's climate change prevention program called Cool Cities Across America, say they are eager to help the town's eating and drinking establishments find a way to reduce waste and recycle all that glass.

To that end, town environmental manager Susan Garrison is helping organize two projects: a committee to come up with a way to recycle all that glass, and a pilot program to reduce glass waste by encouraging bar and restaurant patrons to drink more beer on tap and less out of bottles.

Mike Soriano, owner of Champs sports bar and cafe and co-owner of Awful Arthur's in Kent Square, is involved in both projects. Awful Arthur's will be the site of the "drink from the tap" pilot project.

Virginia Tech students have been recruited to track the results of the program, Soriano said.

"Everybody wants to recycle," Soriano said of business owners. But logistical problems get in the way. So much glass in particular is generated every day in town that it's impractical to store it either inside the businesses for weekly pickup or at a central trash-bin site.

But he's hopeful that years of discussions among officials and business owners will come to fruition soon.

"In the next several months, you'll see them come together to get it done," Soriano said. "And when we're able to do it, we will."