Two grants will help the city’s efforts to increase recycling in Columbia for office buildings and apartment complexes.
The two $5,000 grants, given by the Mid-Missouri Solid Waste Management District, provide recycling bins for eight city office buildings and three apartment complexes. An additional $3,334 will be provided by the city for the effort.
“We are seeking opportunities to recycle,” Waste Minimization Supervisor Layli Terrill said. “Often, people want to recycle, but they don’t have the proper tools or bins to recycle.”
One grant will go toward implementing recycling containers next to desks in over 585 offices in the city, including City Hall, the Health Department and Heuchen. The program is expected to collect 24.5 tons of waste per year.
“We have a lot of city offices that are currently recycling, but they are makeshift containers,” Terrill said. “They are using paper box lids or trash cans, basically things that aren’t really for recycling. With that project we are trying to buy desk-side containers so people can (recycle) at their desk.”
The other grant will go to purchase a new recycling bin for the Apartment Recycling Program, which started in 2000. Prior to the grant, the program was funded by the city. In the past year, 184 tons of recycled waste was generated from the 33 apartment buildings involved.
Prior to the program, the complexes, including Four Winds Village, Holiday House and Ashland Manor, did not offer resources for free, convenient recycling.
“Many of our residents do participate in the recycling program,” Campus Lodge Property Manager Lindsey Bright said. “We find it to be very effective. Our recycling bin is dropped off on Friday mornings and picked up on Monday mornings.”
The bins, which contain separate compartments for paper products and food and beverage containers, remain at each building for two to three days before rotating to another complex.
The new 14-cubic yard bin provided by the grant will cycle between three undecided new complexes. To be applicable, the complex must have at least 100 units and have an easily accessible location.
It is expected to collect 15 tons of recycled material over the year, Terrill said.
“I think it will be successful,” she said. “We have a lot of people that want to recycle, but in apartments a lot of the time, we are not able to accommodate them because they don’t have enough units to warrant such a big container or they don’t have the space available.”
Some students say the environmentally friendly approach of disposing trash is a factor students consider when selecting housing.
“I will most likely be living off campus next year in some sort of apartment or house,” freshman Lauren Sines said. “I would prefer to live somewhere with a recycling program because I’ve always recycled. It makes me cringe to see people throw away products that instead of being repurposed will sit in a landfill.”
The program has also caught the attention of Sustain Mizzou.
“It’s an extremely good thing because that way the people that are living there have access to recycling,” Sustain Mizzou Vice President of Communications Julie Zender said. “It should make it easy for them and make it something they would be willing to do.”
