Document text
No place for recycling Photo by Jim Craven Mildred Totten finds it difficult to put her garbage in the trash cans outside her Ashland apartment building, where there are no recycling bins available. Some Ashland apartments don't provide required bins BY DANI DODGE ASHLAND -- Debbie Megarit considers herself the "queen of recycling." Thompson Well, she used to anyway. Now, she just chucks her newspapers, milk cartons and tin cans into the garbage bin at her Ashland apartment building. There's no place to put recyclables at her complex on Oregon Street -- and she doesn't have room in her tiny apartment to store them. "I don't like it at all," the mother of two said. "I used to be real dedicated." Ashland has an ordinance that requires owners of multi-family dwellings to provide an area for recycling for tenants. But many of them don't. City officials write warning letters to apartment owners if they get a complaint about lack of recycling site -- but it doesn't happen often. Last week, the city's code enforcement officer sent out a rare notice to the owner of Megarit's complex. "It was an education notice more than anything else," Adam Hanks said. "It was `Please be aware this exists"'. Former Councilman Brent Thompson -- who owns several small apartment complexes in Ashland -- says apartment owners should be doing more to make it easier for tenants to recycle and the city should be doing more to enforce the "Opportunity to Recycle" ordinance. "This needs to be ratcheted up in the public consciousness," he said. The ordinance has been on the books nearly 10 years. It was something important to Ken Hagen, a former city council member and recycling activist who passed away in September 1998, Thompson said. "Ken and I talked about it lots of times," Thompson said. "It's about time it was really implemented." Thompson provides separate recycling areas at his apartment complexes, and then goes a step farther. He puts a clause in his leases saying tenants are expected to recycle -- and makes the tenants sign. "It's an issue of how much impact we will have on this earth," Thompson said. One man who has lived in Thompson's Maple Rock Garden Apartments for 20 years said he goes as far as recycling his store receipts. "It's just a matter of trying to save trees, of trying to save living things," John Palmer said. City administrative services director Dick Wanderscheid said he heard from Thompson on Friday."I need to do some checking around to see if there's a problem, and if we need to do something," he said. Just across the street from Megarit's apartment complex, Mildred Totten was having a tough time putting her waste in a trash can because all eight were full -- even though it was two days before pickup. Again, there was nowhere for anyone at her 10-unit complex to recycle, so most everything was going in the eight garbage cans. Totten said when she lived in a San Diego apartment complex with recycling facilities, she just put everything out in the brightly colored bins. Now she saves a few things in her apartment and wastes fossil fuel hauling them around the city. "I take my plastic bags back to Safeway," Totten said. "I take my newspapers to the bins near Bi-Mart. And I save my cans, of course, but that's all." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA