Reshaping, Rebuilding, and Restructuring Your Multi-family Recycling and Composting Programs

Let’s kick this blog off with a pretty incredible tidbit of knowledge. Between your multi-family condo’s compost and recycling programs, a staggering 60% of waste is potentially being diverted from landfills through green and blue bin programs. 60%! That’s more than half of what your entire building throws away, now kept out of our city’s overburdened garbage sites and repurposed for future use. A round of applause to you all! We as condo management companies Edmonton are very happy about it.

That said, the system is definitely not perfect. There are a number of factors that stand in the way of your multi-family recycling and composting programs from operating at peak efficiency. Join us for a deep-dive into waste reduction, all in the name of doing right by our city, our planet, and our future generations.

Composting’s Tough, and Recycling’s Even Harder

We totally hear you on this one. Even our most environmentally-conscious team members admit that it is TOUGH to keep straight all the different rules about what can be recycled, what can be composted, how to break down packaging, how to keep things sorted—just thinking about trying to keep it all straight turns our brains into mulch!

Luckily, you don’t need to put any pressure on yourself to memorize pages and pages of recycling rules. Instead, just take a few seconds to share out your city’s online recycling and composting guidelines with the building, and before you know it, your condo will be practicing the Three R’s with the best of them!

From there, it’s a matter of knowing where your building’s bins are to put everything in its proper place. Take some time to post some signage about where disposal is located, update your building’s shared online form with recycling and composting FAQs including bin whereabouts, and even go so far as to share this knowledge out in your condo’s monthly newsletter (if it has one). Don’t let up, either—one big push will get the ball rolling, but regular messaging is what’s needed to keep that momentum going.

Finally, if you find you’re dealing with residents who are only haphazardly taking part and improperly using the system out of sheer lack of will, take steps to put a stop to this. Use those same methods of communication we just mentioned to explain that improperly participating in the program is not only ineffective but actually negatively impactful to the condo community, as the building ends up being billed for things like putting non-compostable bags in the compost bin and other easily avoidable mistakes.

While we’re on the subject of costs, it’s also worth noting that some forward-thinking janitorial services have started to haul out bottle recycling as a means to offset some of the overall costs associated with recycling and compost programs. The savings are by no means massive, but every little bit helps.

Setting Up for Sanitation Success

Now that you’ve cleared up the mystery of how to recycle and where the compost bin is for your residents, it’s time to spend a moment promoting these programs within your building in order to help them find success. Don’t worry—you’re not in this alone. In fact, the City of Calgary has put together some fantastic online resources to help you set up your multi-family green and blue bin programs for success, including information packages for you to share out, quick-reference posters and guidelines to post up, and even an explainer letter that you can distribute to residents detailing the specifics of multi-family compost and recycling initiatives. Laying the groundwork for green and blue bin success is as easy as printing out some packages, emailing out some notices, and watching your building’s waste production drop like so much food waste into a compostable bag.

An Extra Note on Composting

While the concept of blue bins and recycling is one that Calgarians have been exposed to for more than a decade now, green bins still somehow seem to come off as a relatively novel concept, even though they’ve been municipally-mandated for multi-family complexes for more than two years. That said, anybody seeking this sort of knowledge is only looking for it to do some good, so we’re more than happy to act as evangelists for the city on this one.

The municipal composting program from a high level is actually quite complex, but insofar as individual participation goes, the whole thing is relatively straight-forward. The big thing to keep in mind is that your green bin materials need to be disposed of in compostable bags or liners—full stop. Failing to do so not only contaminates the composting process on a systematic level but as we mentioned earlier, can also come back in the form of fees levied against your condo building. Take the time to spread the word about proper composting practices and share out resources, and your building will be well on its way to waste reduction success!

Reduce, Reuse…Realize Waste Management Success

We’ll be the first to admit that it takes no small amount of effort to compost and recycle effectively—both on an individualistic level, and when it comes to managing a multi-family program. That said, when the task is as important as it is and the stakes are as high as they are, there’s little alternative but to buckle down and take care of what needs to be done. We hope that we’ve given you the resources and guidance that you need to find success with recycling and composting in your condo. If not, we’re happy to chat more on the subject. Just give us a shout at Condo Management Companies Calgary, and we’ll be happy to help you put that waste (diversion program) in its place!