A decade after Virginia required cities and counties to recycle a quarter of their waste, many localities still put too much garbage into landfills.

To their credit, few Western Virginia communities are among the failures, and the Roanoke area is on the verge of becoming a model of recycling success.

In 1989, state lawmakers gave cities and counties six years to reach 25 percent recycling, but more than half of them still fall short. Now some legislators hope to increase compliance not by encouraging recycling but by weakening the standard to 15 percent.

Before accepting second-best, the General Assembly should try a more comprehensive approach, featuring both tougher enforcement -- the state has never taken an enforcement action for noncompliance -- and financial assistance to help cash-strapped communities pay for what is otherwise an unfunded mandate.

Should lawmakers still need ideas, Western Virginia has some to share. Most of the communities in the region meet the requirement, some exceeding it by quite a bit.

Roanoke, for example, recycles nearly half of its waste, the second-highest rate in the state.

Even Roanoke County, despite a half-hearted recycling program with no curbside pickup and only three drop-off sites, recycled 29 percent of its waste thanks to active corporate involvement and turning a lot of brush into usable mulch. Imagine what the county could do with more aggressive recycling.

Skip Decker, division manager for solid waste management for the city of Roanoke has been imagining just that.

The city spends about $500,000 annually on recycling -- a bargain, according to Decker, who calculates that disposing of the same material as garbage would cost $750,000 because the city would need more workers, containers, landfill space and so on.

Even with depressed sales rates for recycled goods, recycling makes fiscal sense.

"We're not only becoming environmental stewards, we're also saving the city money," Decker said.

He now wants to take regional recycling to the next level. He envisions a joint city-county materials recovery facility that would handle sorting and sales, turning a modest profit on clear glass, cardboard, paper and other recyclables.

Decker's plan, though, will work only if the county steps up its efforts.

County officials at least are willing to hear Decker out, if he brings forward a formal proposal, according to Nancy Duval, county solid-waste manager.

"The county's not opposed to recycling; it's just a matter of finding a way to do it economically and where it fits into county needs," Duval said.

Collaboration, starting with the city and county, could set the recycling standard to which the rest of the commonwealth would aspire. That is a legacy worth pursuing.