How can I recycle living in multi-unit housing in SoCal?

June 1, 2009 12:51 AM

I just rented a place in Pasadena, California that doesn't have any recycling. Other than piling mounds of recycling in my tiny kitchen before driving it to a recycling center, what are my options?

I'm living in a small courtyard with 10 little cottages in it, all owned by the same (nice) guy. When I asked about recycling, during the first week of the lease he shrugged and said, "No recycling, you can take the cans to the grocery store if you want."

Right now I've been separating and bagging recycling, but my kitchen is infinitesimal. I had guests over today and had to move all of the recycling debris into my car. I'm planning to drive the accumulation to the recycling center tomorrow, but would love to have some sort of weekly recycling service that picks up our recycling.

A few data points- we're in Pasadena, California, and I'm pretty sure we're in an incorporated area of the city. Our garbage is in a dumpster and picked up by a company weekly.

I'm willing to pay some modest sum to be able to recycle without driving/extra hassle.

Right now I'm just not sure what to do- I moved from the Bay area and had no idea I should even ask about recycling when I was checking out apartments. Help me, AskMe!

posted by stewiethegreat to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

my building [in la] doesn't have any bins for recycling, but i throw all my cans and bottles in a separate bag in the dumpster and they are almost always gone in the morning.
posted by mattsweaters at 1:27 AM on June 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

One thing I have seen people do is get a sort of narrow, but tall system of hanging bins (arranged vertically on top of each other) and separate everything out into those. The kind I'm talking about lets you pull bins in the middle forward to put things into them, and you can remove bins entirely too. You can set them up to have wheels on them so if even a shelf-sized thing takes up too much room, you can move it out of the way when you have guests over.

Failing that, you could get a cheap set of plastic drawers on wheels. I think I've seen those at places like The Container Store and whatnot.
posted by Nattie at 2:00 AM on June 1, 2009

Find a nearby high school student with a car. Arrange for him or her to drop off your recycling once a week in exchange for being able to keep the money from the drink cans and/or offer to pay.
posted by metahawk at 6:09 AM on June 1, 2009

I'll bet Athens Services is your pickup company. They pick up trash all over the SoCal area and claim to recycle - I'm skeptical of how they accomplish this.
posted by chez shoes at 7:28 AM on June 1, 2009

Pasadena does have a curbside recycling program that is generally restricted to single family and small multi-family dwellings.

http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/publicworks/smiwmII/default.asp

Perhaps if there are a few people in your building interested in recycling as well, and if you called one of the telephone numbers in the link above, you could get a recycling bin that is collected on a weekly basis.
posted by Seppaku at 7:53 AM on June 1, 2009

I have this same problem at my apartment complex. The town where I live does have a recycling pick up service, but this is only for single-family houses, not for complexes. Our imperfect solution has been to use these bins from Ikea--we have a set of three, one for deposits, one for paper, and one for metal and plastic recyclables. When they get full, I take them to the university where I work, which has its own recycling plant. The deposits get returned to the store. It's not a great solution (since it still requires me to take the recycling somewhere), but the bins help to keep everything organized and looking neat.
posted by Jemstar at 7:58 AM on June 1, 2009

Ikea has some great sorting bins that are stackable for short term storage. I love them. They have an opening in the front so that you don't have to pick one up to throw something in the one under them. And it's an excuse to come to beautiful Downtown Burbank!
posted by Sophie1 at 8:52 AM on June 1, 2009

My apartment building in Pasadena doesn't recycle either. I pile stuff up and take it to the recycling center at Caltech.
posted by kbuxton at 9:55 AM on June 1, 2009

I have the same problem. Right now I drive my recyclables in. However, like mattsweaters, I've noticed that people scour garbage cans for recyclables they can exchange for money. So tonight (trash day is tomorrow) I'm going to try putting my valuable recyclables out on the curb to see if they will get picked up. I'm still going to have to drive my paper recycling in. I think the solution to that is to reduce my paper use. I've heard there's a way you can stop getting junk mail . . .
posted by pizzazz at 6:46 PM on June 1, 2009

Yesterday was trash day, and I left a bag of recyclables, mostly glass, out on the curb in the morning. When I got home, the glass was gone, and two tin cans that had been accidentally mixed in were sitting on the curb. The Pasadena recycling scavengers seem to like glass, at least. If you drink a lot of wine, this could be part of your solution.
posted by pizzazz at 6:27 PM on June 3, 2009