Reducing Staff Time Spent Clearing Trash and Illegal Dumping
Residents tend to get the blame here but managing trash in multifamily schemes is inherently challenging due to the lack of individual householder accountability and competing priorities, particularly if the communal deposit point is in an inaccessible location and when you get to it you have to unlock doors or fight your way past bags of trash in order to lift dirty bin lids. The height of most dumpster lids actually exceeds ADA requirements, and some sidewaste occurs because of the proportion of residents that will unfortunately find it impossible to lift the lid with one hand and place a bag of trash in the dumpster with the other. A messy dumpster area tends to attract illegal dumping, and things spiral out of control.
Not easy to quantify but should include staff labor and overhead costs, risks to health and safety and impact on resident wellbeing as well as the obvious hazardous waste disposal costs, which in themselves can run to thousands of dollars a month. Then facing outwards, this doesn’t reflect well on the reputation of your organization either, so you have to ask yourself the question, would we not be better off investing this cash in a long-term solution rather than pouring it down the drain?
Many landlords understand these challenges and are finding that investment in infrastructure is changing behavior. Securing dumpsters within housings which allow residents to load them without unlocking and opening doors removes the reasons why much of the sidewaste occurs, and eliminating the need for pedestrian access within dumpster enclosures reduces the opportunity for bulk deposits as well. You’ll still need to keep the facility clean, of course, and also be prepared to use fines and enforcement on the small number of people who persist in unacceptable behavior.
metroSTOR dumpster housings optimize storage capacity and encourage recycling within a given footprint on the street or sidewalk, within an attractive facade that reduces visual impact on the streetscene. Optional access control systems allow producers to share facilities while enabling out-of-hours emptying and preventing antisocial behavior and unauthorized use.
