LET’S TALK TRASH!!! (or RECYCLING)
...t prevalent and valuable commodities which the end markets desire. Recycling these items at a multi-family property can be difficult as many of you already know. The key to a successful recycling program is cooperation from the tenants and maintenance employees. In addition, space is required to store the materials for collection day – something that is simply not available in many buildings. In older high-rise buildings in urban settings, trash rooms were just not designed on each floor to store the materials prior to collection day. The trash chute is dedicated to trash only so, what alternatives are available? In most instances, the code enforcement folks will not let residents place recycling out near their apartment doors because of potential evacuation issues in the event of a fire or emergency. Will the residents carry their recycling downstairs to a central storage area? Probably not. If they do, will they place the materials in the correct container? That’s a 50-50 proposition which brings us to the biggest issue that causes recyclables to be discarded as trash rather than recycling at an additional cost to you – contamination. Because we rely on people, tenants, maintenance employees etc. to do this correctly there is plenty of room for error and it may not be their fault. Recycling is done differently in almost every town, county and state and the commodities selected for recycling vary with each. Why is that you may ask? Each town typically has their own recycling coordinator and with that comes differing opinions about what should be recycled. So, they choose commodities they want to recycle or what is best financially for the municipality or company. How does all of this impact you and your properties? In many ways, of course, and especially, financially. Removing recyclables from your waste stream will reduce your monthly trash bills in most cases. Although there are still collection costs associated with recycling, there is a much lower tipping or drop off fee (compared with trash) because the commodities have value at the end mark...