Apartment Complex
Recycling in Eugene

"Hi, I live in an apartment building and there's no recycling here. Where's the nearest place I can take stuff?" Calls like this are frequent events at BRING. With over 40,000 people living in 23,500 multifamily housing units within the Eugene Springfield metropolitan area, apartment dwellers make up a big chunk of the population, a population often lacking the convenient access to curbside recycling that those living in single family residences take for granted. In both Eugene and Springfield, apartments come under "commercial" rather than "residential" rules due to the type of container their garbage is collected in. Both communities have regulations requiring haulers to provide recycling services upon request and to inform commercial customers of their program twice a year. Now here's the catch. The request has to come from the owner or manager of the property and not the tenant. Many landlords are reluctant to ask for this service, even though state law says they must provide recycling if they live in a community where a multiunit recycling program is in place. Eugene does have such a program. If you are a tenant and want to recycle, talk to your building manager. Maybe they don't realize that recycling service can be provided free. Unfortunately, sometimes landlords don't want to offer recycling because they think it will be messy or expose them to liability. Here's where some education and good planning come in. Try and find out your landlord or manager's concerns. Are they worried that broken glass will be a hazard? Or that recycling bins won't fit into the area reserved for trash? Talk to other tenants. Do they want recycling too? Maybe you can form a committee and come up with a plan to manage a recycling area. If the landlord knows that several tenants are willing to take responsibility to keep it clean and orderly, they may be willing to give recycling a try. It can help if you show that recycling can save money. With less stuff going into the trash they may be able to get a smaller size dumpster or less frequent pickup, both of which translate to lower garbage bills. Perhaps the savings could go towards a rent reduction for a tenant who is willing to maintain the recycling area. What can you do if you cannot persuade your landlord to start recycling, or have types of materials that aren't collected where you live? It's time to get creative. Maybe you can take them to work and recycle them there, or perhaps you have a friend who has curbside pickup who would put them out for you. Then there's always public drop sites. BRING operates two large and two mini 24 hour drop sites which take many recyclables. Call BRING at 746-3023 for location and materials accepted. Lane County operates full line drop sites at every transfer station throughout the county including the Glenwood Central Receiving Station in the Eugene Springfield metro area. For hours of operation, call 682-4119. If you're one of the lucky apartment dwellers that can recycle, be sure to follow your garbage haulers guidelines. Putting paper or cereal boxes in the corrugated cardboard will not get them recycled and may result in material that could have been recycled being tossed. What about compostable food scraps like coffee grounds and banana peels? Vermicomposting, using earthworms to make compost, is quite possible in an apartment. A worm bin will live quite happily under your sink and if you can't use all the resulting material on your houseplants, give it away to gardening friends or make a street tree very happy. Another option is to save food scraps for a friend who has a compost bin; this may sound odd, but you'd be amazed how many people actually do this! Lastly but most importantly, try and reduce the amount of things you need to discard, either in the trash or recycling bins, if you live in a house or an apartment. Buy in bulk, avoid over packaged products, repair rather than replace and generally have more fun by using less stuff!
Julie Daniel General Manager BRING Recycling http://www.bringrecycling.org/
phone: (541) 746-3023 fax: (541) 726-9894

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