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I live in an apartment in an urban area. I would love to be able to recycle, but unfortunately, my building doesn't offer recycling as a service.

I've searched for recycling facilities near me, and all of the ones that I've found are large-scale industrial ones (places where the recycling trucks unload). I've also searched for individual public recycling stations, but the ones that I've found seem like they're used by the public as trash dumpsters, which makes me think that they would be rejected by the recycling company for being contaminated with non-recyclable material.

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    Sounds like a frustrating problem. It might be worth a phone call to the recycling business that runs the public drop off points to discuss the situation and see whether it's worth your effort to use them. Also, would it be worth asking your local council (or equivalent) about it? They may have some useful information.
    – Highly Irregular
    Dec 6, 2020 at 22:36
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    Just a slight nitpick: sorting should not be confused recycling, i.e. I think you mean your apartment has no sorting of waste. And unfortunately, not everything which gets sorted effectively gets recycled. An article from a Ducth reporter came to find only about 10% of the sorted plastics got actually recycled. The rest goes to landfill in other countries. Sad, but to keep in mind that the first thing to do remains reducing waste.
    – stijn
    Dec 7, 2020 at 17:59

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I live in an apartment in an urban area. I would love to be able to recycle, but unfortunately, my building doesn't offer recycling as a service.

Vote.

This sounds a very foreign problem to me. I live in an urban area in a house that doesn't have any recycling of waste.

However, this is not an issue to me. I sort the waste, and when I happen to drive near containers that accept sorted waste, I put my sorted waste there. I do so only when I have some other reason for such a car trip and then dump a large amount of waste there at once, so nobody can complain the dozen or so kilometers in my car create so much emissions that recycling the waste would be counterproductive.

It seems strange to me that there are municipalities where public sorted waste containers are not available. However, to make them available, your best bet is to vote for a candidate who views such containers favorably.

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    I agree voting could help, but one can probably do that just once every 4 years or so. Perhaps starting a campaign or petition for better public waste facilities is faster and more effective?
    – THelper
    Dec 10, 2020 at 18:51
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You mentioned that for recycling, your area has "large-scale industrial ones (places where the recycling trucks unload)".

That's a great start! If your community is large enough, start a petition to get management to provide recycling as a service. It may even attract new (and better!) tenants.

If they are unwilling, find out the minimum quantity for those trucks you see to come and pick up from your location. Some pick up services even supply their own cans or dumpsters for people in your community to use.

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