Contrary to what critics will sometimes allege, it is indeed possible to profit from saving the environment, as downtown residents like Mike Weinberg have proven. Weinberg, a resident of Horizons at 555 Front St. and 510 First Ave., expanded a recycling program in his buildings that will not only save him and his fellow residents an estimated $12,000 in the coming year. It also won the condominium project an award from the City Department of Environmental Services.
Surprisingly, the state law requiring San Diego to recycle is not the source of the savings. Horizon’s recycling company makes money on everything they recycle, substantially lowering the cost to homes. The result is that Horizons saves significantly from recycling costs that are less than those of typical garbage pickup.
“Last year we saved $8,300, and this year we’re on track [to] save about $12,000 over the next year,” Weinberg said. “It’s substantial. Because the pickup of 3-yard bin of trash costs somewhere in the order of $16, to pick up a 4-yard bin of recycling costs about $6.”
While saving money is a huge incentive for the program, Weinberg said the reasons behind conceiving the program were environmental from the beginning.
“What used to all go in the trash is being diverted into recycling, and we’re actually going to start reducing our trash pickup, so we’ll save even more money there.”
For all his work, recognition came from the Environmental Services Department with the awarded trophy made of melted green glass.
“In a nutshell, we did give them a Recycler of the Year Award for 2006 because of the incredible program [Weinberg] has going there at Horizons,” said Stephen Grealy, recycling project manager at the Environmental Services Department of San Diego. “He’s also been gracious enough to act as a technical advisor, if you will, for other condominium projects.”
According to Grealy, Horizons goes beyond recycling on the floor, though. Care is taken to minimize landscaping waste, paper is printed on both sides, notices are posted in one common area instead of being sent to every occupant and even the building’s envelopes consist of recycled paper.
Horizons’ increased recycling output was actually rather simple in design. There already existed a refuse room on each floor, which was essentially a small closet containing a 50-gallon trash bin and 7-gallon recycle bin, which only accepted newspapers. All other recycling required going to the basement “” seemingly not a big deal but nonetheless inconvenient compared to simply dumping one’s refuse in the nearby trash bins. Then in June, Horizons replaced the 7-gallon recycle bins with 40-gallon bins, allowing everything to be recycled on the floor. The complex, according to Weinberg, immediately went to an extra pickup per week, which represented another 10 tons, and Weinberg estimated they will beat that too.
“I was trying to think of a way we could get more recycling on the floor, because as good as some people are, most people just throw their stuff away rather than go all the way down to the basement,” Weinberg said.
However, because of the prevalence of trash chutes downtown, other buildings might find that increasing their own recycling output is a bit more difficult. If other buildings had similar refuse rooms, Horizons’ simple solution could easily be duplicated.
However, if enough residents are made aware of the significant upside to increasing recycling, perhaps anything is possible. After all, in addition to being environmentally responsible, Weinberg’s building achieved something that all downtown residents can relate to.
“It keeps us from having to raise our HOA fees,” he said.