Multi Unit Recycling Challenges
Although curbside recycling is becoming increasingly popular within single family residential communities throughout the United States, multi-unit properties remain hesitant to join the recycling movement. The reason is simple (and not-so simple all at the same time.) Working together doesn’t always work.
Town house and apartment home communities face special challenges that single family residences do not. The inability to hold specific people accountable for what goes into the recycling bins. As a result you get recycling programs that not only fail, but become costly and cumbersome to the manager overseeing the project.
The top challenges facing multi-unit properties are:
Accountability: Sharing a recycling bin with several neighbors makes it hard to pinpoint who may be throwing trash into the recycling container. Trash = contamination = the inability to recycle the materials
Poaching: Bins with open access to the community is an open invitation for poachers that live within the community or outsiders to load their truck with materials that they can recycle for money such as aluminum cans and cardboard products.
Space: With so many homes, cars and trash cans already present, finding space for recycling containers can be hard to do. Additionally, space within the containers is an issue as well. If a tenant does not break down their boxes from Costco before placing them in the shared bin, the next tenant does not have room for their recyclables. What does that tenant do? Places their recyclables in the trash can of course!
Turnover: Multi-unit properties tend to have a high tenant transiency and property management turnover, which leads to information about what can and cannot be recycled not being relayed in a timely fashion or sometimes at all. With any successful recycling program you need to Know Before You Throw!
Unfortunately, until there are tangible consequences for not recycling this problem will not be resolved. Ideas such as charging each tenant for recycling services included in their rent or association fees have been proposed, but with so many properties to chose from that do not charge for the service it is easy for tenants to simply choose to live elsewhere….