Empty tote recycling in Prince William County, Virginia

Distribution first, one laboratory employer

Virginia Works lists the county’s 50 largest employers for the third quarter of 2025. US Foodservice and The Martin Brower Company are foodservice distributors, Amazon Fulfillment Services runs e-commerce fulfillment, and American Type Culture Collection is a life-sciences organization. Grocery also appears among the county’s lines of work.

Distribution sites tend to empty totes of sanitizers and cleaners for their floors and trucks. A life-sciences employer is the other kind of source: its totes may have held reagents or buffers, and those are graded by the SDS.

What a foodservice distributor empties

A foodservice distributor runs trucks, refrigerated storage and sanitation. Its totes carry cleaners, truck-wash soaps and refrigeration chemistry rather than food, because the product it sells is mostly in cases. That makes its empties chemical totes in the main, and the SDS the quickest guide.

The two distributors on the list are named only because Virginia Works names them among the 50 largest employers. We make no claim about their totes.

The industrial market

Lee & Associates report sizable leases in Manassas in the third quarter of 2026, as in Springfield and Sterling. The Manassas page covers the city’s industrial and building-equipment contractors.

Woodbridge, Dale City, Gainesville and Dumfries have no sourced tote-emptying industry in our research, so they have no page of their own. A site in any of them can use this one.

Agency and rule

Virginia DEQ handles hazardous waste in the county. The federal rule in 40 CFR 261.7 applies in full: a tote over 119 gallons is empty at one inch of residue or 0.3% of capacity by weight, and acute hazardous waste needs a triple rinse.

A tote that fails the test is not ours to take. Measuring the heel shows how to find out before you ask. Sites in 20109, 20110, 22191 and the county’s other postal codes use the same request.

What a foodservice distributor empties

A foodservice distributor runs trucks, refrigerated storage and sanitation. Its totes carry cleaners, truck-wash soaps and refrigeration chemistry rather than food. The product it sells is mostly in cases. That makes its empties chemical totes in the main, and the SDS the quickest guide.

The two distributors on the list, US Foodservice and The Martin Brower Company, are named only because Virginia Works names them as among the 50 largest employers. We make no claim about their totes.

Reading the grocery line

Grocery is one of Prince William County’s lines of work, and no source names an employer. That is another reason the county page stays general, and why a request from a grocery site should state what the totes held. We name no company where the sources does not.

Asking from the county

The request is the way to find out. A line about the building, the dock and who signs for the totes is more useful here than a long description of the company.

Cities under Prince William County, VA

• Manassas, VAManassas has industrial space and building-equipment contractors; no pickup is confirmed in Prince William County. Read how its totes are graded.