the architecture of tomorrow

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!

City Park Comes to Life

Over the weekend I noticed that the small shed structure by the composter in the park by my apartment building was open and a person was inside trying to organize its contents. Sheets were also posted on the outside wall of the shed, detailing a project list for the park and a need for volunteers to fill positions, such as compost master and label master. Another poster had a sketched map of the park and said that special watering was needed. The park has a butterfly garden with a path going through it, and a corn, bean and squash circular garden, as well as a bed at street side that the city plants annuals in every year. Other than the annual bed, all of the other gardens as well as the composter, over the past two years I've lived here, have been neglected and litter strewn. The composting bin lid fell of at one point, and wooden slats are missing along the front. It never seemed to get tended to. I've been wondering how to get involved in rejuvenating the park so this sudden activity, both with this woman in the shed I've seen used for the first time since I've lived here and with a couple of people raking the park and picking up litter the week before, really excited me. I think it's important that this park is well maintained, especially considering the neighborhood it is in. The street running behind can be a bit scary at night, and I've witnessed violence. Cops cruise by regularly.
The next day I bumped into the same lady who was in the shed by the composter while I was adding my food scraps and I let her know my interest in rejuvenating and maintaining the park. She seemed excited to have someone interested in helping so I hope she calls. The park and its gardens are a project by Evergreen.
Their site has excellent resources, including a comprehensive native plant database and information about starting community garden projects. Check it out.

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
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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.