Champaign City Council Approves Contract for Apartment Bldg Recycling Pickup

Champaign city officials are looking forward to having recycling for apartment buildings by the end of the year. The City Council voted Tuesday night to sign a contract with Allied Waste Transportation to provide recycling pickup for multi-family dwellings. Currently, recycling pickup in Champaign is only mandated for single family homes and apartments with four units or less.

Council Member Mike Ladue is a longtime recycling booster. He says the city had once been a leader in community recycling, before pulling back in the 1990s. But with the introduction of recycling pickup for apartment buildings, LaDue says the recycling will expand to a new scale and scope, "including the 55 percent of our residents who are renters, a great majority of whom live in multiplex dwellings. This will reach all those residents, many of whom have been interested in recycling for many, many years."

In contracting with Allied Waste Transportation, Champaign will join the city of Urbana in mandating recycling pickup for all residential buildings. City officials estimate the contract will cost about $ 1.5 million over five years, to be paid for with user fees.