Letter to Board of Directors at my condo - Grass Roots Recycling Home » Blogs » tomfriedel's blog

Recycling Status and upcoming meeting items.

Please forward to Board of Directors.

I will not be at the next meeting. Christine said she would submit my
concerns. A have much input, but want to focus on three items.

1) Our Co-Mingled containers fill up every week. I take my co-mingled
items off-property. We need one more co-mingled container.

2) There is no information/signage about what a recyclable is, or how
to properly recycle 'recyclables'. I have already written many
reasons why we need better signage, but I will present another. Our
recycling company told Tim and I that recyclables in non-transparent
bags might be thrown away. About 50% or our recyclers put their items
in garbage bags. One of my daily tasks is to open these bags, which
contain from 0 to 100% recyclables, and sort through them. If I
didn't do this, our co-mingled containers would definitely overflow.
It was stated at the last meeting that our residents shouldn't
be bothered to recycle because of our high maintenane fee, but
certainly by the same logic I should not have to be doing this either.
I maintain a document at http://www.jacksontower.com/recycling.php
with very specific information about what and how to recycle. Maybe if
that was referened on a sign, that would go a long way to address this
issue (since Continental is fighting with me about making a better sign,
one which I have volunteered to make).

3) Regarding recycling via the chute, I believe that there are people
who want to recycle and those that can't be bothered. The first group
should be properly enabled and informed (items 1 and 2), and the second
group should not be allowed to poison the recyclable stream. I would
like to make sure a chute solution does not allow this, and want to
emphasize item #2 is needed with or without the chutes working. With
the chutes, most items will be in plastic bags, and we need to get the
latest status from our recycling company about this issue. I volunteer
to do all of this work.

I will be in Colombia, South America from Aug 18 to October 5. Here
is an recent article about an American company destroying the Amazon
rain forest for aluminum mining. I maintain two web sites about
forest conservation, and have seen and will see personally this type of
destruction, and it very painful for me. I hope this goes some ways
to explain how important this issue is to me, and in general.

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0731-alcoa_amazon.html

Tom Friedel