| Recycling Becoming More of an Issue |
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By Ethan C. Nobles
Arkansas Realtors® Association
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Apartments.com, a Chicago-based group that caters to the residential rental market, released a study suggesting that apartment dwellers are inclined to recycle.
The study touches on various regions and lumps Arkansas in with Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The study found that 56.3 percent of people living in apartments recycle. Considering that the Environmental Protection Agency states that 32 percent of all Americans recycle, it appears that the point made by Apartments.com that people living in apartments are more inclined to recycle appears valid.
When it comes to Arkansas, however, whether people engage in recycling may have as much to do with where they live as whether they rent or own a home. Keith Lau, president of Fort Smith-based River Valley Landlords Association and a Realtor®, said it is his experience that people tend to recycle when encouraged to do so.
In Fort Smith, Lau said there just aren’t as many opportunities available in the way of recycling programs available for people living in apartments as there are for people living in single-family residences. So it’s more common to find homeowners – or people renting houses or duplexes – recycling than people living in apartments.
Since 1995, a curbside recycling program has been in place in Fort Smith and receptacles are available free of charge to residents and small businesses wanting to participate in the effort. A similar program is available through a few apartment complexes in Fort Smith, too – Oakwood Gardens, Mayfair Apartments, Mall View Apartments, Willow Lake Town homes and the School House Apartments.
The arrangement is a familiar one throughout Arkansas. Curbside recycling programs are fairly common, but finding similar programs for people living in apartments isn’t as easy. Of course, some cities make it more convenient for people living in apartments to recycle than other towns do.
The Apartments.com survey tends to back up the notion that people will take advantage of recycling programs if they are convenient. According to that survey, 81.3 percent of people living in apartments who don’t recycle said they didn’t participate in a recycling program because none were easily available.
Of course, the interest in recycling has increased over the past couple of decades as people have become more concerned about the environment. The Apartment.com survey points out that recycling is a way people can actively take part in environmentally friendly programs, but people interested in doing their part to protect the environment can do some other things, too.
Some of the tips suggested by Apartment.com are:
● Use energy efficient light bulbs.
● When appliances are plugged in but not turned on, energy is still being used. Cut energy bills by up to 40 percent by using a power strip.
● Burn soy candles to avoid pollutants and smoke marks on walls.
● Use an organic cotton shower curtain paired with a nylon liner to cut down on mold buildup and eliminate harmful gases found in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) coated curtains.
● Instead of reaching for bottled water, fill up a non-leaching, lined aluminum bottle with filtered tap water.
● Purchase a potted plant instead of using an electric air purifier.
● Eliminate junk mail and paper waste by removing names and addresses from junk mail lists.
The Apartments.com survey is more evidence that recycling is becoming more important to Americans. It will be fascinating to see how cities through Arkansas deal with the issue in the coming years.
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House to House is distributed weekly by Arkansas Realtors® Association |