Can anyone point to results that support the act of providing recycling containers to each dwelling in support of apartment or multi-family recycling?
In other words, providing a personal or small recycling bin to each dwelling to encourage the tenant to transport their recyclables to a recycling dumpster outside.
It makes sense to me that it would encourage recycling and would provide an opportunity for outreach (through labeling), Im just looking for examples.
Any other ideas to encourage apartment/multi-family housing recycling are welcome.
I DID look at at the thread on the cbsm website, but thought there might be some new feedback since 2006.
Thank you!
~Bill
Bill Miller
United States
Apartment Setting Recycling
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Hi Bill,
We're in the middle of a project now where we provided two types (tenants chose one) of in-suite recycle containers to encourage sorting and use of the outside recycle dumpsters. Since the project is still taking place, I don't have any results to share yet, but one of our challenges has been measuring the impact of the containers at sites with communal dumpsters. Do you have a plan in place for establishing a baseline and measuring changes against that baseline?
Best,
Aldan Shank
CleanScapes
www.cleanscapes.com
Hi Bill,
We used small plastic indoor mini-bins to collect recyclables at home for our multi-family recycling program in Culver City (in LA) where space is pretty tight. The mini-bins were very popular among residents but we weren't able to distribute one to every participant due to cost. So we also gave out recycling totes that can be used to collect newspapers and smaller recyclables and that's worked very well among our participating complexes as well (our newspaper collection went up too!). Compared with the baseline of 85.33 tons in April, total tonnage of recyclables rose 18% by Sept to 100.45 tons following our outreach and distribution of outdoor site signs that showed what can and can't be recycled to make it easy for residents to recycle properly. One complex's recycling has increased so much that it has already reduced its trash pick-ups to twice a week from 3x, saving on collection costs since trash collection costs 4.5x that of recycling collection costs. I would say that combining the mini-bins with other prompts like the outdoor site signs was also key to make it as easy for residents to recycle as possible. Check out our program's website at www.culvercity.org/recycle for more information. I've attached images of our mini-bins, recycling totes and site signs.
Cheers,
Namju Cho
[email protected]
S. Groner Associates
www.sga-inc.net
Namju Cho
SGA
United States
...
Hi Bill:
The City of Hamilton (Canada) has had a multi-residence recycling program in place for several years. We recently rolled out the organic waste program to multi-res properties too. Check our Website at http://www.hamilton.ca/CityServices/Garbage-and-Recycling/Blue-boxes-recycling/ for information on our municipal recycling programs or click on "Apartment recycling program" for specifics on multi-res. Feel free to contact me directly about communication and outreach elements of the multi-res program.
Philip Homerski
Information & Business Advisor
City of Hamilton Public Works Department
Canada