What can be done to get restaurants and large housing projects to start recycling?

Question

I work at a restaurant and hate that most of the trash is recyclable. I also live in a townhome community and would love it if we had several recycling bins next to our dumpsters. How does one become active into getting a fairly large city in on recycling?

Answer 1

My apartment complex has 3 dumpsters.  1 for garbage and 2 for recycling.  I live in a very small town (pop. 1200).  I think you would need to contact the garbage collectors/recycling pickup providor in your area, as well as management of your community and see if they could put some recycling bins out.

As for the restaurants, that'd be more difficult.  If you have the separate containers out, people will use them.  We started a recycling program in my school when I was in high school.  We had boxes in each room for paper and a garbage can with a round hole in the lid in the cafeteria for pop cans.  Our group went around and emptied them once a week and put it out for pick-up.

Answer 2

Currently, in Charlotte if a business has a liquor liscense they have to recycle their disposed glass by law.  They have to arrange for (read: pay for) a recycler to remove the glass.  If not, they lose the Liq.Lis. and the ability to sell beer, wine and liquor.

Answer 3

write a letter to the senate and tell him or her that we need to make a law that says : no more foods wasting because its bad for the environment. I want our environment to be clean and new again.

Answer 4

Find people who want to BUY the material!

Once you do THAT, people will be lining up to sell the stuff to them.  

Oh!  You sound like you want an answer where someone gets a politician to make an edict, and everyone must FOLLOW this edict or become the scurge of the community!

Answer 5

Write your senator and pass a law and make it illegal not to recycle. Yeah then we could start the recycling police and they could beat you into submission with a baton made of recycled aluminum, and then put a hefty fine on top of that with all the revenue going to the Rev. Al Gore and his global warming disciples.

Answer 6

Paying for excess rubbish collection might help.  Recycling could be given more importance than rubbish collection.   Where I am living rubbish gets collected weekly and recycling gets collected fortnightly.  Both bins are the same size.  Maybe that could be turned around.

Answer 7

I don't know about your area, but I do know that here in NYC it is the law to recycle, whether in restaurant, work place and housing project. I am sure the law exist in your area and may have most ignoring it.

Answer 8

Most of what trash is recyclable?  Nothing with food wastes, especially nothing paper or cardboard that has touched food can be recycled.

And where do you live that does not have community-wide recycling?  We are required to put out our recycling bins or our regular trash will not be taken.  All recyclables go in together and are picked up by a separate truck or at least put into a separate compartment of a truck.  The local hauler-disposer has terminated employees for throwing it all in together.

One container and a local recycler is all it takes to get a program started.

Answer 9

I worked in a restaurant once, too, and the waste that went on was disgusting. What I did was start small.

Start with your own store, talk to the bosses tell them whats up, maybe have an employee meeting with the rest of the staff. I provided the bins and told them what could and should be thrown in there, and I took them home to recycle, too. Don't forget the office "trash". Now, I quit the job before I could take it very far but as it was going well, I was going to take my case to the corporate bosses and see if they were willing to start a recycling program. You will need to really sell the idea to them, if it costs them extra money, they won't go for it. So make sure you do some research, have a presentation set up, give them an incentive.  That's about all I can suggest to you on that level.

As for your community, go around and see if others are interested in recycling as well, maybe have them sign their names to a petition. Then go to the community leaders or city officials and see what can be done about a recycling program, offer to do the research if it must be done. Go to your local waste management and ask them what might have to be done to get this going.

All in all, talk to as many people as you can, get the word out.

You could go to your local gov't leaders, but don't count on them to do anything about it, they haven't yet, right?

Don't rely on others to get this done, like Gandhi said "you must be the change you wish to see in the world."

good luck to you!