Amanda Kwong is on a mission to change her apartment’s waste habits! She shares her challenges and successes in reducing shared waste bin contamination and 7 tips for implementing apartment-wide eco-friendly changes.

You recycle right. You know your soft plastics from your hard plastics. The sight of someone sipping water from a plastic bottle makes your skin crawl. You’re the type of person who one day aims to achieve the holy grail of zero-waste: the mason jar rubbish bin. I was that person, blissfully watching the size of my rubbish bin shrink with each change I made to our personal household waste footprint. We proudly took our landfill bin for kerbside collection with only one bag of rubbish each month.

And then we moved into an apartment of 11 units with shared bins.

…and when you share bins with others, you begin to realise that the vast majority of people actually don’t know or don’t care about household waste stream management. It feels like a dagger to the heart every time you open your mixed recycling bin to see a sea of plastic bags with old tissues, soft plastics and food waste.

My name is Amanda, and I live in a household with Mr Greenapartmentproject and our 18 month old daughter in an 50 square metre apartment in metropolitan Melbourne. Our mission, albeit a very long-term mission, is simply to reduce the rate of recycling contamination within our apartment block. By sharing our challenges and successes, I hope that others can also feel empowered to embark on their own Green Apartment Project and continue to inspire others to make better choices about their household waste.

Spoiler alert: we still have contaminated bins each week. But don’t let that deter you, every small action can help in ways you might not be able to see.

Tip 1: Seek first to understand before being understood

…and most importantly, do not leave passive aggressive notes in common areas. There may be a multitude of reasons as to why people aren’t following the recycling rules as meticulously as you are. It’s important to understand these reasons, for example, perhaps the information is not readily available for people to know how to sort rubbish. Perhaps people really are very busy, or struggling with their own personal issues that recycling isn’t at the forefront of their minds.

Most importantly, you need to realise that there are some people who simply do not care, and as much as it kills you inside, you have to let this go. You’re best bet is that you’ll get enough people on your side that those who don’t care will eventually be swept up by the tide of correct recycling. Which brings me to my next tip…

Tip 2: Find like-minded people

With growing concern about our recycling crisis, the chances of you living right next door to someone who shares the same values as you is highly likely. Reach out to these people and set up a working group. With more people on your side, you are not only operating safely in numbers, but also sharing the mental and physical workload of implementing small changes in your apartment.

Tip 3: Be an active voice in your owner’s corporation committee

Note: if you rent, liaise with your landlord to suggest changes to the committee on your behalf. No one ever likes a backseat driver, so if you have a change to make, suggest it, and volunteer to act on it. Additionally, you’ll need to consider helping others with their priorities for the apartment (see tip number 1).

This might mean providing feedback on aspects of the apartment that you might not really care about. For example, helping to find a solution for the maintenance of a door in a common area that doesn’t work properly before suggesting erecting clear signage for recycling.

In our apartment block, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to set up a soft plastics bin. While we’ve been successful in encouraging others to use it, we’re the only ones who clear the bin’s contents to the supermarket for the entire apartment building. Sure, it’s not our responsibility to manage other people’s soft plastics, but anything that can make things easier for others is also a win for us.

We also prioritise ideas that tend to be money savers for the apartment. Saving money is a huge common value amongst many people, so the chances of you winning support by suggesting changes that save money (and secretly, the environment too), are far greater. Incentives are powerful. For example, we had unanimous support for activating sensor operated LED hallway lights that were otherwise on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Now that our lights are off for the vast majority of the day, the electricity savings (and therefore our carbon footprint…yay!) will be significant.

Tip 4: Share a conversation, share things, share ideas

Studies are showing that feelings of isolation are more prevalent despite our closer proximity to each other, particularly in apartment blocks. Get to know your neighbours, share any excess home-grown produce you might have (but remember to clean up anything left over that isn’t taken from common areas!).

We commonly share our lemons, and when the time comes, our herbs and veggies will also be shared in the apartment. We also share council resources/freebies that might be useful for others.

I also make a point of saying hello AND including some form of small talk if I ever come across a neighbour. I make time to get to know their names, and greet them by their names when I next see them. In doing this, I’ve managed to have one non-threatening bin-side conversation with a neighbour who was placing their bagged rubbish in the recycling bin.

Tip 5: Lighten up your communication and be accountable

Sometimes it is necessary to send out letters to the entire apartment block to keep rubbish areas neat and safe. It might be advisable to work with your owner’s corporation manager or chair to send our communique’s (offer to draft this for them).

However, if you want to catch the attention of more people, be creative, kind and funny (without offending anyone). Appeal to common values that you think others might have (e.g. safety, deterring vermin) before communicating your solution to avoid the problem that most people would be concerned about. Unfortunately, waving a picture of a turtle with a straw up its nose might not appeal to everyone to make change happen.

Finally, don’t forget to put your name to any note/communication you write. You may feel embarrassed to own up to an apartment-wide communique, but instead, offer your name and contact at the bottom of any communications as a source of information or help for others.

Tip 6: Work with your council’s resources

Write to your council. Most councils have a sustainability team who are responsible for waste management. Recycling contamination is a problem for most councils, and in most cases, they’re very keen to work with residents to find solutions or have champions who can carry out council-approved strategies within your apartment block.

Our council has supplied us with bin stickers, signage, leaflets, and fridge magnets with council waste services. They were even willing to host a recycling information session at our apartment! However, we weren’t able to get the numbers to make it work for us.

Tip 7: Seek refuge in your own personal waste reduction

When all else fails (this happens every time we open our shared bins) refocus on your own personal zero-waste goals. We do this a heck-load, and while we know that our small individual action is being countered by at least half of the apartment block, it keeps us sane.

We share our experiences online, not only to keep ourselves accountable, but because we want to make our individual efforts a collective effort. Whether this is within our apartment, or remotely with others online, taking one person with you on your journey might just start a chain of positive actions with more people than you might initially imagine.

Thank you for all your hard work helping and inspiring those around you to reduce their waste, recycle right, and be more sustainable Amanda! And for writing this guest post for us. You can find Amanda on Instagram at @greenapartmentproject.

*we maintain this site in our free time and support in any way, shape or form means a lot and helps us keep it running, whether it is using an affiliate link when investing in something, sharing our content, or buying us a coffee on Ko-fi.