BALTIMORE, MA - Home Properties, Inc. (NYSE: HME) today announced the successful establishment of a recycling program at its Ridgeview at Wakefield Valley apartment community located in Westminster, Maryland. What makes the recycling program at Home Properties' Ridgeview unique is that it was truly a team effort among environmentally conscious employees and residents. In lieu of a municipally-sponsored recycling program, Ridgeview at Wakefield Valley's employees and residents joined forces to take control of their own recycling needs.
Nicole Lanza, Property Manager of Ridgeview, and her site team initially began with a letter to apartment community residents to gauge interest in recycling efforts. Almost immediately, residents began bringing their own recycle bins to the apartment community's maintenance shop on a weekly basis. Ridgeview employees volunteered to truck the recyclables to the Carroll County Landfill and return residents' bins for further recycling.
"Carroll County's Recycling Program leadership was incredibly cooperative with our efforts. That cooperation, along with the apartment community interest, made the recycling program overwhelmingly successful, right from the start," Lanza said. "Home Properties' trucks were filled to the brim each week!"
Following further assessment of the program, Maria Myers, Recycling Manager, Bureau of Solid Waste for Carroll County Government, told Lanza that recyclables could be dropped off in garbage bags, instead of bins, making the program even more convenient for all participants.
"Home Properties is very progressive and definitely out in front of the environmental curve," Myers observed. "They recognize that recycling is just the right thing to do. Based on the work I do in Carroll County, I believe that Ridgeview at Wakefield Valley is the first multifamily apartment community in the county that is currently recycling on a regular basis."
As a result of their personal sense of responsibility to the environment and extraordinary recycling efforts, Home Properties recently purchased a recycling dumpster for Ridgeview residents.
"To have our own dumpster, exclusively for recyclables, says a lot about the people who live here – and the team effort it took to make that happen," said Lanza. "Not only that, Home Properties has made it easy to recycle, so people who might not normally make that choice, now do so on a weekly basis."
Lanza estimates that about 35 percent of the 204-unit apartment community actively participates in the recycling program.
Home Properties is a publicly traded apartment real estate investment trust that owns, operates, develops, acquires and rehabilitates apartment communities primarily in selected Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Southeast Florida markets. Currently, Home Properties operates 107 communities containing 36,948 apartment units. Of these, 35,798 units in 105 communities are owned directly by the Company; 868 units are partially owned and managed by the Company as general partner, and 282 units are managed for other owners.
Source: Home Properties, Inc.