Recycling challenges and solutions for apartment dwellers

Recycling in Apartments

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Providing Better Facilities for Recycling to Apartment Dwellers

Recycling is highly beneficial to the natural environment as it plays a vital role in preserving natural resources. Recycling caters with the benefit of reducing the amount of material entering landfills. Moreover, recycling can save money for building owner. It costs less to recycle discards than to throw them away (Rankin, 11). The process of making new products from raw materials costs a great deal in comparison to making them through recycled products. This paper highlights the challenges encountered by people living in apartments or multi-family building in terms of recycling materials. It also explains the current practices in this regard and recommends prospects solutions for improving recycling facilities for apartment dwellers.

Recycling Challenges Faced by Apartment Dwellers

The physical structure, environment and management of multi-family complexes give birth to varying systems and approaches to waste management. Recycling initiatives for apartments vary a great deal from a single garden style condominium. The removal of solid waste in apartments comprising of several families and residents makes is immensely difficult and requires proper management.

Limited Space

Limited space tends to the foremost problem encountered by apartment dwellers in implementing any recycling program within their own vicinity. The presence of adequate interior space for processing recyclables, and distance to recycling bins is highly important in making a recycling program successful (Ando, 426). This limited space hinders apartment dwellers in storing their recyclables effectively. In a condominium or a single-family dwelling, people place their recycling bin in the garage or beside the house until collection day. Apartments are devoid of this much space to an extent that even a standard 18 gallon collection recycling container also serves as an obstacle for them.

Cost Issues

Cost is another overriding factor which makes recycling a difficult process in apartment dwellings. Curbside collection for single family homes is relatively easy to manage and automated systems could easily be implemented there for collection of recyclable materials. Apartment complexes have no curbside access and thus the system is not applicable there. Apartments involve immense manpower for collection and flawless management for proper waste disposal and recycling (Birkner, Celusnak, Nutini and Rycenga, 15). Recycling in itself is an expensive affair as recycling services require specialized containers which cost more money. Buildings which use smallest-sized dumpsters are not able to save on trash bill by recycling.

Recycling Collection Issues

Collection of recyclables from the entire apartment complex is one of the primary concerns associated with recycling in apartments. Most of the management teams in apartments are reluctant in spending money on door-to-door collection of recyclables as it involves immense manpower and time (Petru). Moreover, the collection of recyclables becomes an unsanitary process too; bottles & cans are smelly usually and attract bugs. Not only this, extra recycling collection containers add to problems associated with aesthetics, litter, etc. recycling in apartments involve additional containers which fall a victim of illegal dumping and acts of vandalism. Illegal dumping encompasses the contamination of recyclables with non-recyclables/improperly prepared recyclables. Thus constant monitoring is required for keeping track of contamination.

Placement of Recycling Containers

Various apartment complexes have placed different kinds of recycling containers for implementing recycling strategies within their vicinities. Recycling containers are usually located at the same place as the trash containers. In this way it is no more difficult for residents to dump their recycling than it is to dump their garbage (Ando, 430).

However, it is not just about dumping the recyclables. This process of dumping in containers often leads to contamination or improper disposal of recyclables. Thus, there exists a need to automate the process in order to make it more convenient and environment friendly.

Use of Separate Recycling Chutes by Tall buildings

Tall buildings use chutes to convey their garbage down instead of carrying it via stairs or elevators in order to avoid any messy situation or pollution. Thus in such tall buildings recycling is encouraged through making separate chutes for recyclable materials too. Both trash and recyclable chutes are placed side by side in order to ease the process of dumping and recycling.

However, this involves the inconvenience of servicing each chute room daily, as they get heaped up with heavy recyclables each day. It also involves overflowing of the chute rooms at times, which require proper handling and cleaning of the mess caused by the overflow.

Prospective Solutions for Better Recycling Facilities

Apart from the above mentioned main strategies, there lies a requirement for the implementation more efficient and effective recycling facilities in order to improve the conditions of apartment dwellers. Following are some measures which can ensure effective yet manageable solutions to the recycling dilemma faced by multi-family buildings.

Automated Recycling Solution for High Rise buildings

As trash chutes involve problems of overflow and inconvenience, thus it is essential to implement an automated solution for recycling in tall high rise buildings. Each floor of the building is provided with an electronic panel where the residents are provided with several options to deposit the waste or recyclable materials (Wood, 39). If one wants to dispose newspaper, then the newspaper container is forwarded at the end of trash chute. Similarly, if one wants to deposit wet waste, then the trash container is forwarded at the trash chute end. This results in automatic segregation of waste products and recyclables.

Effective Education Programs

Effective education program stressing upon the need of "effective recycling" can be vital in improving recycling facilities within apartments. An easy access to clear information on what is recyclable, how it is collected and why it is important would be instrumental in making apartment dwellers aware of the right and effective way to recycle things. Moreover messages that encourage people to get started and develop a recycling habit could also serve as a motivational source (Pike et. al, 214).

Segregation of Waste Products

In order to cater the issue of illegal dumping, or in other words, dumping of inappropriate waste with recyclables, it is essential to segregate our waste products. This would be beneficial in demarcating the boundary between recyclables and non-recyclables. Dry and wet waste products must be well sorted before dumping or recycling them (Petru). Most wet waste products cannot be recycled and are quite messy at times, thus these wastes must be dumped properly in trash. Materials like paper waste could be kept in separate bags in order to ease out the recycling process and make it more clean and mess-free.

Recycling is highly essential in order to reduce the heaped dumps of landfill for maintaining a healthy environment and preservation of the natural resources. However, apartment dwellers face challenges of limited space and inconvenience in recycling their waste products. Recycling in high rise buildings involve high cost and effective management which further makes recycling a difficult process. Proper education and awareness programs can play a vital role in disseminating the right way towards effective recycling. There is a need to motivate people towards recycling by catering the apartment dwellers with better facilities. These facilities include proper awareness and education programs, segregation of waste materials and implementation of automated recycling systems in apartments.