Stodola floating plan for recycling

He wants bins at some apartments

Driver Trudy Fowler watches as recyclables fall from her truck Wednesday morning at Waste Management’s Materials Recovery Facility on Sloane Drive in Little Rock. Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola unveiled a plan Wednesday to expand the single-stream recycling program to multifamily dwellings.
Driver Trudy Fowler watches as recyclables fall from her truck Wednesday morning at Waste Management’s Materials Recovery Facility on Sloane Drive in Little Rock. Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola unveiled a plan Wednesday to expand the single-stream recycling program to multifamily dwellings.

Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola wants the city to require all multifamily apartment complexes of 100 units or more to offer recycling to their tenants.

His proposal, in an ordinance draft provided to the city Board of Directors on Tuesday, calls for the complexes to implement recycling by July 1. While it mandates recycling at the larger complexes, it encourages it at smaller ones.

“My desire was to try and have something I think is going to be direct and easy to implement - one that can be measured in a variety of ways and also be successful,” Stodola said in an interview Wednesday. He and staff members have been working on the proposal for about four months.

Property managers contacted Wednesday were mostly receptive to the idea but had questions about its implementation, cost and effect on their tenants.

Ron Goss, president of Rector Phillips Morse Inc., which manages about 3,500 apartment units in the city, said he’s already contacted his waste hauler to see what the cost would be to implement recycling. In the long run, Goss said, his trash-hauling costs are likely to even out.

“Our philosophy after our meeting with [the trash haulers] was that as people become more accustomed to recycling, the size of our trash dumpsters would be minimized and lessened, and therefore we’d have fewer pickups because a lot of things they throw away are recyclable,” Goss said.

“It’s not something that will happen immediately. It will be a process as our tenants are educated on recycling. … As we got our numbers back from Waste Management, we found our cost over a period of time would probably just be a wash. We wouldn’t save any money, but it would not cost us a great deal, if anything,” he said.

But there are related matters to consider, such as finding space for the recycling bins, Goss said.

Arkansas Apartment Association President Shatoria Daniels, who manages Chenal Pointe at the Divide, noted that at smaller complexes the space needed for recycling bins could reduce parking space. Her complex already offers recycling, but it’s one of the few in the city that do.

And with just four months in which to implement recycling, the added cost may not be in a property manager’s budget, Daniels said. She said some property managers might pass the cost on to tenants.

“Property managers would have to do the upfront cost and then depending on the management company, their trash fee [charged to tenants] could be raised. It was not put in anyone’s budget, so they can’t notify their residents until this comes to pass. This is going to be a shocker on both sides as far as the timing of it,” Daniels said.

The Arkansas Apartment Association doesn’t oppose the proposal and welcomes a discussion on implementing recycling, she added. She called Stodola’s proposal “a good program,” but suggested more time is needed for property managers to put it in place.

About 100 complexes in Little Rock have 100 or more units, according to Stodola. They comprise 19,485 units, or 83 percent of all multifamily housing in the city.

The mayor said mandating recycling at larger complexes will not likely be a financial burden and that even if there is a minimal cost, it would be worth it.

“I think this is the responsible thing as a progressive city,” he said. “There’s a huge positive impact in terms of reducing the amount of material that’s going into our landfills. That’s an expense to the city. This will extend the life of our landfill in a very monumental way, and that’s a savings to the community and a savings to the city.”

He added that it’s “good economics” because the city competes to attract industries, and companies place value on accessibility to environmental sustainability. Since the city implemented recycling for single-family homes, participation has increased and the amount of material recycled has more than doubled.

Participation in the single-family program jumped from 38 percent in 2012 to 74 percent last year, according to Melinda Glasgow with Waste Management, which holds the city recycling contract. More than 10,200 tons of recyclables were collected last year, up from about 5,500 tons in 2012, Glasgow said.

That’s trash not being dumped into the landfill - an equivalent of removing the annual emissions of 5,717 cars from the atmosphere, or growing 703,528 trees for 10 years, or saving 47.9 million kilowatt hours of electricity, according to a presentation Glasgow gave to the city board last week.

A pilot program conducted by the Pulaski County Solid Waste Management District in 2010 and 2011 showed mixed results with multifamily recycling in the city. The district partnered with Waste Management to get recycling into an apartment complex in Little Rock, North Little Rock and Maumelle.

The Little Rock complex, St. Johns Apartments on 65th Street, withdrew from the program early because of lack of participation. But at its replacement, Calais Forest Apartments in west Little Rock, there was such good participation that the complex managers decided to keep recycling after the pilot program ended.

While the pilot program’s goal wasn’t to determine cost, the district’s Deputy Director and Recycling Coordinator Carol Bevis said she figured out afterward that implementation at the chosen complexes would have cost between $1.50 to $2 per unit each month in addition to trash pickup costs.

“We did find the tenants were excited about it. They really thought it was a good thing,” Bevis said. “They wanted to recycle. The apartment managers found out it was not hard, it was not adding a whole lot of work for them. … We found that the more education and instruction that tenants had, the better the program.”

Stodola’s proposal calls for multifamily residences to provide information fliers to housing staff members and tenants. The information must be provided at the start of the program and to all new tenants. Under the proposal, managers must document in writing that the information was provided to the tenants.

While the proposed ordinance doesn’t specify repercussions for nonparticipation, Stodola said if property managers don’t comply, they may be issued citations and have to appear in environmental court. He said he didn’t expect it to come to that.

The Board of Directors is expected to discuss the proposal at an agenda meeting Tuesday at 4 p.m. at City Hall. If the proposal moves forward, city directors will vote on it the next week. Most city directors reached Wednesday said they hadn’t had time to evaluate the proposal, but they support the concept.

Recycling is “a good thing,” Ward 4 Director Brad Cazort said. “The less we put in our landfill, the less we have to charge residents for building new cells [at the landfill.] Recycling has a large plus side on it for a number of reasons.”

Ward 5 Director Lance Hines said he, too, is for recycling but is concerned about the cost being transferred to tenants.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/20/2014

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