Throwing away a piece of paper may not sound like a big deal but, for John Brady, an Information Technology worker for the city of Staunton, it was. He couldn't believe that mass amounts of paper were being thrown into the garbage, instead of recycled.

So, he decided to do something about it.

Brady says, “It just seemed like something we could do, so why not? And, it was. It's turned out to be something we could do."

Brady has now turned the mail room in city hall into a recycling room.

"The process is pretty simple," says Brady. "We save the boxes that the paper comes in. So, we ask everyone to save those boxes, and use those as the recycling bins."

Revonda Crawford runs New Life Recycling, and she couldn't be happier that the city is now on board.

Crawford says, "It cuts down on their waste and they do make a little profit off of it too."

Brady says recycling isn't about the profit. He would give them the paper.

Brady says, "Bottom line is, it isn't costing the city any money. It's just costing people brain time to say, 'Let me throw this in the recycling bin as opposed to the trash.'"

Recycling and go green efforts are not new throughout the entire city.

Crawford says, "This has been an ongoing effort for about the last 15 years. Trying to get the word out there and it has. It has increased, each year we are seeing less and less going to the landfills and more and more getting to be recycled."

Tom Yeago with Clean City Staunton has been working for more than 30 years to make quick and easy recycling available for the people of Staunton.

Yeago says, "There's a whole bunch of industrial and business recycling that goes on. My understanding is that Staunton is close to a 40 percent recycling rate, which is pretty good."

At Gypsy Hill Park, Clean City Staunton has recycling bins that take everything from newspapers to sometimes tires.

"It's efficiency and it makes landfills last longer and it's just a sensible thing to do," says Yeago.

Back at city hall, Brady has already accomplished the sensible part and is now looking long term.

Brady says, "It's nice that we got it started and I think it will be more exciting to see how much we've actually done maybe over the course of a year or two years, to say we've ended up recycling so many pounds of paper. That's the part that will be exciting."

Staunton also has curb-side recycling that officials say is an impressive effort considering city's relatively small size.