I read the post on the Greenhouse Tavern website. That was followed up by a few emails, some Facebook postings, and a series of phone calls. One of my friends told me it was time for me to rant on my blog.
Truth is, however, that most of the problem here does not lie with the city.
Let’s step back a bit. A couple of years ago, there was no recycling available downtown. Commercial properties have always been responsible for their own waste. Apartments and condos began introducing recycling for one reason. They began to discover the impact on their hauling fees if they recycled some of their waste. Restaurants and other businesses have been slower to adopt recycling, even though they are traditionally the biggest producers of metal and glass waste.
Enter the development on E 4th Street. Through the hard work of a few active residents and some of the restaurateurs ( and I am sure some others that I am not aware of ), a dumpster for Recycling was placed in the parking lot for E. 4th Street. This was no easy feat. As I understand it, the space was leased and the leasee gave up the spot in order for a dumpster to be placed there. All has been relatively good ever since. I have heard stories of how employees at some of the restaurants were only recycling when the owner was there. I have heard tales of bags of recycling being dumped in the regular dumpster. These anecdotes are par for the course.
Part of the problem has been the slow pace of changing the practices and attitudes of the general public. For example, while Tower City is putting out recycle bins for paper, cans, glass, etc they are often full of trash from the food court. Until we get eveyone on the same page, there will be stories like this, true or not. I will be glad when we have a comprehensive curbside recycling program. The more people are exposed to recycling at home, the more they are likely to do it while they are at work, or at play. I am envious of Lakewood’s program where residents are fined for not recycling.
So, back to E 4th. It is my understanding that the dumpster was removed at the request of the parking lot owner. I do not know why, exactly. If I had to venture a guess, it would be that the parking lot owners or the person who leased the space no longer wanted to pay for the dumpster to be there. I am sure that I have ranted about downtown parking lots and how they hinder development more than once, so I will refrain from doing it here.
The long and the short of it all is that the City of Cleveland is not responsible for the loss of the dumpster on E 4th Street. You can call them if you want, but they cannot force the parking lot, that is private property, to have a dumpster on site. If you feel compelled, call the company that operates the parking for that area and give them a call.
