Tasha's Project
Submitted by Tasha Brookshire on Fri, 09/25/2009 - 7:04pm
Hi, my name is Tasha Brookshire and my project is hopefully going to be helping my new neighborhood get into recylcing.
Hi, my name is Tasha Brookshire and my project is hopefully going to be helping my new neighborhood get into recylcing.
Associated Recyclers
Of Wisconsin
apartment recycling
Hi Tasha!
Great idea - you can check www.recyclemorewisconsin.org for some more recycling information. You e-mailed me some questions; I thought I'd answer them here in case others are looking for similar information - so this will be a long comment :)
A residential building with 4 or fewer units (apartments) in it has recycling provided by the city, town, village or county that it's in - in that case, look up the local department of public works to find out how to request a container and get things started. If there are 5 or more apartments, then the building is treated as a business, meaning the property owners should provide recycling containers and a collection service.
Usually apartment buildings have outdoor carts or a dumpster that is labeled for recycling. The materials that should be recycled (they are banned from Landfills under WI law) are all kinds of paper and cardboard, metal cans, glass bottles and containers and plastic bottles marked with a 1 or a 2, some recycling services take more kinds of plastics.
What I suggest is to first look for a dumpster or trash cans outside. If there is only an outdoor container for garbage, and you've never been informed or recycling or given instructions, that probably means the place does not have a recycling program. Usually there is a waste hauling company's name on the trash dumpster. If the company is Waste Management or Veolia, both of those companies offer recycling services too and it is a matter of changing the contract and getting an additional container to collect recyclables too. The building owner should be able to negotiate a price for recycling pick-ups that is lower than the cost of trash pick-ups, since the landfill fees and taxes would be avoided, so hopefully the owners will see it as a beneficial thing to do (plus, it's the law).
Then it's important to get the word out to the people who live in the building. Be SMART did a study and found out that one of the biggest reasons that people don't recycle as much as they can is that they don't know what materials are accepted for recycling where they live. So that will be the next step. Let me know how it goes!
Chris Beimborn, Be SMART Mentor