Apartment Recycling: Action Update

It's been about 2 weeks now since I posted the sign addressing tenants on my floor about dealing with their recyclables properly. Amazingly, the sign is still up and intact. A few days after I initially posted it in the disposal chute room, I saw the maintenance worker on our floor while I was waiting for an elevator. He is the one who takes away any recyclables tenants leave in the garbage chute rooms, so he must've seen the sign and left it up (and why wouldn't he since it does benefit him). I have also noticed less recyclables being left in the garbage chute room as well. These are all good signs!

Compostable Materials

Here is a basic list of what you can add to your composter or vermicomposter. When you compost, you are decomposing organic biodegradable matter - keep this in mind when deciding whether something should go in your compost bin or not. You want a good balance between adding materials that are considered 'green' (break down quickly, high in nitrogen) and 'brown' (dryer, tougher, high in carbon).

Green:
-any vegetable & fruit material you can think of - maybe produced from preparing your meals or might have gone bad prior to you being able to eat it. If vermicomposting, beware of adding too much matter from the onion and citrus families, as many worms don't like these items as much as others.
-egg shells
-tea bags
-coffee grounds
-plant and grass clippings/trimmings

-soil

Brown:
-dried/dead plants stems and flowers
-leaves
-dry straw and hay
-paper towels (depends on what they soaked up, see below)

Things to avoid putting in a small scale composter:
-meat
-dairy
-fats & oils
-prepared foods
-pet waste
Not only do these items not break down as easily, they can also attract unwanted rodents and animals to your composter.

Composting really gets you thinking about your diet and what you're eating daily. It motivates me to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables as anything not used from them can be composted. Natural packaging, for a example a banana peel, orange peels and melon rinds can be converted into useful compost for the garden instead of entering a landfill via a tightly closed plastic garbage bag. It's really an empowering process. If you have a backyard it's easy to get a composter for your home. If you don't and your community doesn't, talk to neighbors and organizations to try to start one up. What a great way for a neighborhood to reduce its waste, come together, and produce useful compost for gardens in the community.

I am continuing to use my community composter in the nearby park as well as my worm composter on my balcony. I am using the container in the photo above to store food scraps in until I empty them into the composter. I keep it next to the kitchen garbage under the sink and access it easily when preparing meals. It serves as a good visual reminder of the amount of matter I am diverting from the waste stream. The lid can screw on so there are no fruit flies or odours.

Apartment Recycling: Taking Action

I'm tired of tenants (at least on my floor of the building) leaving their recyclables in the disposal chute room for building management to take care of. Earlier in the week the room was absolutely filled with recyclables to the point where I could not even enter the room (granted, it is a small room). My sister and I were talking about it and she gave me the idea to create a sign to post in the disposal chute room to see what, if any, effect it has on tenant's recycling habits. I may, if successful, post it on all floors of the building, but will start with my own for now. It reads as follows:

To: All Tenants

Re: Recyclables in Disposal Chute Rooms


Please refrain from leaving your recyclables in the disposable chute room. All recyclables must be taken down and disposed of in the Recycling Bins available at the rear of the building. If more bins are needed, please inform building management. Thank you for your recycling efforts.

I will be checking to see if the sign is taken down, if recyclables are still being left, or if they're not being left. One concern is that if it's laziness that prevents them from recycling properly, they might just put everything down the garbage chute. I guess that's the risk I take. They're half way there, so they may as well go the full mile.

Apartment Waste: Thoughts & Challenges

I can't, in good conscience, throw "everything I don't want anymore" into the garbage. . . There's a language of trash; what is it, this stuff I no longer need?:
Garbage
Trash
Refuse
Waste
Junk
break it down....
food scraps
packaging
plastic
tissues
sewage
hair
q tips
fabric softener
lint
odds & ends
paper
cardboard
cans
jugs
jars
bottles
boxes
mail
plastic bags
ash
old/broken furniture
and more and more and more
-----------
Unneeded. Superfluous. Extra. Objects we need to make disappear and vanish. A diversion of responsibility. An easy answer: the garbage chute. We don't really have much of a choice. I use re-using, recycling and composting as ways to reduce my garbage output. If I want to compost as an apartment dweller I face certain challenges. Most apartments (mine was built in the 70's) provide ways to dispose of trash, via garbage chutes conveniently located on each floor, but that's where it ends in terms of services/facilities provided for disposing the waste we produce by living. Even recycling is a challenge. There is no separate chute for recycling in my building (it would be fantastic if there was!). Residents who wish to recycle must bring down their recycling from their units in the elevator to the back of the building where recycling bins are located. Many residents opt to leave their recyclables in the garbage chute room, expecting maintenance staff to do the actual recycling. I'm sure many residents don't recycle at all. Perhaps expanded recycling services in apartment buildings would change this. Our building does not encourage residents to recycle or compost. Twice a year a "Waste Watch" newsletter is distributed in apartment resident's mailboxes. The most recent issue encourages apartment residents in the city to recycle and to talk to building staff about adding more bins if the current ones are consistently full. Our building doesn't have that problem, but maybe that points to a lack of recycling.
Composting presents similar challenges to apartment dwellers. I am grateful that our building has a 3 compartment wooden composter located outside of it. I have not seen many around other apartment buildings. Like for recycling, residents must bring down any food waste they wish to compost. I don't mind, as in my mind recycling and composting takes effort that is well worth it in the end. I just wish recycling and composting weren't initiatives individual residents take on themselves, but responsibilities citizens must meet. Improved recycling and composting programs for apartments would help facilitate this movement. Vast structural changes in how our city manages, thinks about, talks about and deals with its waste are required to get citizens (especially apartment dwellers) to actively participate in the management of their own waste by providing accessible and easy to use facilities necessary to make such participation prevalent. At least most residential neighborhoods consisting of houses in Toronto have the Green Bin Program for food and other organic waste. A Green Bin Pilot Program for Multi-Unit Residents is occurring, and I hope it results in the spread of such programs to all apartment buildings in the city. Apartments can be green too. It's up to both the city and building managements to provide the equipment and facilities, and up to the residents to take the initiative to divert as much waste as possible from the garbage by both recycling and composting through provided facilities. Both go hand in and and require each other for success. I keep a certain amount of faith that people do honestly care about this stuff, that it's not just a hassle. When you think about your waste it forces you to think about your lifestyle, and the unusable by-products of it, and we need to do that more.
Although I am vermicomposting, I am finding that I am producing more food waste than I can feasibly feed to and keep around for the worms (at least for now since I'm building the worms up to eating more food). Thus, I continue to use the composter outside my building. I don't see many other residents using it, in fact the only other person I saw using it was a homeless man picking out food scraps I had placed in it. I also wonder if any one uses the compost produced from the bin. Who tends to it? Is it the city's bin or the apartment's? These are questions I need to look into further.

"Recycling Grows" Video Clip

3 weeks worth of recycling grows before your eyes.