So this town always used to just have private trash collection. You paid monthly or yearly, not a lot I don't think, and the garbage truck came to your house.
Then some town council people or whatever decided that wasn't fair to low-income people.
So now the town picks up trash, for free, but the catch is they will only pick up what you put in these special yellow garbage bags. And the bags cost $3 each.
But they gave every house, for free, three big plastic wheelie garbage cans. A gray one for trash, a blue one for recyclable cans/bottles, and a green one for paper recycling. And they made recycling mandatory.
Buying the bags is a pain, but at the end of the day it's probably cheaper than a monthly fee.
And the good news is, it makes people really try to reduce their trash. People are recycling more, composting more, etc.
So, it's a small bit of cost/effort, but with a good payoff.
BUT
My building has found some sort of loophole. They are NOT using the town trash pickup. Since they count as a commercial account, not residential (since it's more than 4 units), they can still pay for private trash pickup. which is nice- it means I don't have to buy the yellow bags.
But there's no recycling.
I even called the company about it, and they were like 'yup, your building is not signed up for our recycling service. you should talk to the condo association about that.'
So I'm sure they're just being cheap and didn't want to pay for recycling and got the bare minimum trash service. (But then why not just use the free town system?)
But since we're renting, we're not on the condo board, and they don't meet often... I don't know what to do.
We have 5 giant green trash cans out front. Which i thought meant paper, but for this company it means trash, which is confusing.
Anyway, so for now we are just stockpiling our recyclables and storing them. Even tried taking them to the dump ourselves the other day, but they wouldn't let us. So the options now are 1- just throw them in the trash. 2- store them up and take them to my parents' and put them out with their recyclables, 3- ask our neighbors if we can put them in their bins til we get it sorted out.
But so in the meantime I wanted to find a nice way to divide them up and keep things neat and not destroy and stink up the kitchen.
And I found this.
I want it.
It has separate compartments for paper and cans, and it has a built in compacter to smash cans and plastic bottles.
But it's $300.
seriously, only I could find a way to make a garbage can an expensive gadget that I suddenly really want.
Or you could just set an extra alarm on your smartphone to the recycle sound! :-)
First, that gadget is pretty freakin cool.
Second, you may have already looked into this, but the town may have some type of ordinance requiring recycling for commercial buildings even though they don't have to participate in the town's program. I had a similar problem at my apt building and I called the city and they told me that the building had to provide recycling or face fines. After a couple of letters from the city, we now have recycling. It is worth a try.
I'm having a recycling crisis right now. I am also stockpiling because I need a new place to put my recycles out. My building does not recycle and the one time I put my own can out someone took it because my friend promised me he would retrieve it when they did the pick up but he went out for coffee instead of waiting. I really need to figure something out soon because it is starting to get to be a bit much. I have to carry my recycles all over looking for other peoples boxes I can stuff them in.
I'm sort of thinking that the gadget you want probably is not as environmentally friendly as it appears. I kind of doubt that it would last much longer than a year. It also looks like it would be hard to clean?
I really like this brand but they are expensive trash/recyling bins.
:::link:::
Good luck!