Tenant won%26#039;t recycle? Hi I own a home and have a small apartment over my garage that I rent out. The tenant that I have there now refuses to recycle. What%26#039;s the big deal? I have already received 2 fines from my county garbage pick up which I made her pay. I have told her that it is enforced that we recycle in my area and on top of it, I am really big into recycling everything. I am tired of going out every day before garbage pick up to go through her trash and sort the recycling. She just pays the fine and thinks it%26#039;s done and over with. What can I do about this??

Additional Details

2 weeks ago

Oh yeah, there is plenty of room and I have the appropriate bins with them clearly labeled...I got the labels from my garbage company. It is stored in the garage, right underneath her...for god sakes...I have to actually walk across my drive way (it%26#039;s a detached garage) which is a ways from my house to sort my stuff...I%26#039;m sure she can walk down some stairs to do hers.

2 weeks ago

Oh yeah, there is plenty of room and I have the appropriate bins with them clearly labeled...I got the labels from my garbage company. It is stored in the garage, right underneath her...for god sakes...I have to actually walk across my drive way (it%26#039;s a detached garage) which is a ways from my house to sort my stuff...I%26#039;m sure she can walk down some stairs to do hers.

Best Answer

I am assuming you have a rental contract with this individual. In your contract you should include a section addressing the tenants responsibility to abide by HOA regulations, city state and government ordinances. You should also have included something in regards to what happens if they repeatedly fail to comply. The rental contract I have requires me to follow these rules. If a fine is incurred because of a violation, I am required to pay the fines and receive a warning letter from landlord. After three or more warnings for the same violation, I am officially in violation of my rental contract and can evicted.

Hopefully you have a rental contract. Secondly I hope you have something in it that is similar, or can be interpreted similarly as what I described above. It is sad today that so many people have very little respect for others, but that is why we have to have contracts, laws and consequences.

Asker's Rating:

Thanks

Other Answers (12)

• More than likely you can%26#039;t do anything. If you wanted a tenant to recycle then you should have put it into your lease. If the lease doesn%26#039;t say anything about it then there is nothing you can do. The fact is recycling is not as great as most people think. Very few things make economic sense to recycle... aluminum cans makes sense.. most other things don%26#039;t and if it were not for government subsidies provided to people accepting the items they would be tossed in the waste bins.
  
  
• When you rent out a place you loose allot of your rights. Basically if they are not destroying the place, not paying rent or breaking the law you have little to stand on. Now the latter %26quot;breaking the law%26quot; you could possible use to evict them. You have to decide if you want to put up with your current tenant or go through the hassle of finding a new one and evicting this one (if you can)?
• Are the facilities available for her? ie. does the flat have recycling boxes for her to put things in, or just a general bin in the kitchen? Is there space? I only wonder that as I am in a small flat and struggle for space to store recycling in between our fortnightly collections - sometimes I have to make a trip to the dump and put stuff in the recycling bins there as I just don%26#039;t have enough space to store it all.
  
  Ask her to start recycling for the next collection on warning of her 3 month notice. If she doesn%26#039;t recycle, serve her notice. If she wants to keep her home then she will recycle!
• If she chooses not to recycle, she chooses not to recycle. If she chooses to pay the fine, she chooses to pay the fine. She%26#039;s your tenant, not your child. Let her do as she wishes and pay the fine if she chooses and don%26#039;t play big brother. No one HAS to recycle if they choose not to and it%26#039;s really none of your business if she pays the fines. I am sure she does a lot of things in her life you wouldn%26#039;t like.....but that%26#039;s just it, it%26#039;s her life.
• charge your tenant a monthly fee for not recycling. give one months notice that this is being added to the lease. make it a steep fee to encourage the recycling. then give one large bin for products to be recycled to put in her unit and take it weekly to do yourself. the fee will pay you for your time and the reward is greater:)
• How did we get to a point in this country where recycling is mandatory? Seems to me that if privacy rights keep the government out of a womans uterus, they should also keep the government out of your garbage can!
• get up real early one morning and nail some shutes outside her window that go to each bucket that way she can just put it in a shute and if that dont work make sure you get up early all the time and make a ruckus of sorting out the recyclables