Recycling

More and more apartment owners and property managers are turning to document management systems to control the paper flow and streamline and improve their business processes. These systems not only manage electronic bills, contracts, and invoices, but also create an electronic library of documents once they’ve been scanned into the system.

But after you’ve made the move to an electronic document management system, how do you properly dispose of all the information that has occupied file folders, filled storage boxes, packed file cabinets, and otherwise cluttered up your desk?

As much as we talk about the importance of recycling, the United States is the number one trash-producing country in the world.  This means that 5% of the world’s population generates 40% of the world’s waste! With last week being National Recycling Week, I thought it would be fun to show you some ways to conserve waste and save money by repairing, versus replacing, your appliances.  The below infograph, from Part Select, shows the cost to replace some common appliances.  If you click on the buttons, possible symptoms and their fixes are shown.  Have fun playing around with this and maybe next time one of your resident’s dishwasher leaks, you can save some money by repairing it.

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Does your business require maintaining a lot of paper business records? Have you considered going paperless? Read this quick guide to going paperless.

Gone are the days when going green was a cutting-edge, leftist notion. With environmental issues at the forefront of the media, going green is now firmly in the mainstream, quickly becoming the norm rather than the exception. Even with all of these new, more eco-friendly options on the market, the truth of the matter is that completely greening your properties and your business in one fell swoop can be an expensive endeavor up-front (though most green measures will likely save you money in the long-run). Our suggestion? Take small measures over time that won’t break the bank in the short-run, will save you money in the long run, and will make you feel great about doing your part in the process.

Appliances
Installing energy-efficient appliances in your properties (dishwashers, refrigerators, washing machines, etc.) is a great way of incorporating greener, more energy-efficient elements into your properties. Not only will your property be more energy efficient by using less water and producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions, but you can also cut down significantly on utility bills by using water and energy more efficiently.

Speaking of saving money, you can save some cash up front with energy efficient appliances as well. Rebates are often available for ENERGY STAR certified products, of which there are many. Not only do energy efficient appliances offer you the chance to be greener and save on utilities, but they’re also something that (sooner or later) you need to purchase anyway. You don’t have to break the bank by going out and buying new dishwashers for each and every one of your units all at once. Just take it one step at a time, replacing old appliances as necessary with new, more environmentally friendly versions. Over time, you’ll find yourself with a much greener property.

We often discuss ways to transform our apartment communities in more eco-friendly ways, but many times this is in relation to other apartment communities.  In other words, we are trying to create a competitive advantage between apartment communities.  But how does the multifamily industry stack up against single family homes?  To answer this question, I talked “green” with Tim Frank, Team Leader of the Livable Communities Committee at the Sierra Club.

After talking with Mr. Frank for just a few minutes, it became clear that the “American Dream” isn’t “eco friendly” at all. There are several direct negative consequences of single family housing, and several indirect sources, as well.

Expanded Resource Requirements
Living in a single-family house is extremely inefficient in terms of resources needed to run it.  Mr. Frank explained that single family developments require more electricity and water.  And due to the spread out nature of these developments, they also require longer lines for sewer, electrical, phone, cable, as well as longer roads.  The buildings themselves also affect the ecological impact.  Mr. Frank explained that during both the initial construction, as well as with ongoing maintenance, multifamily buildings are much more efficient with the resources they require relative to single family developments.

For those of you aren’t familiar, today is April 22, and today we are celebrating Earth Day.  The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 and it marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement (thank you, Wikipedia).

Since then the movement has picked up quite a bit of speed, evolving from a small political outcry to a full blown trend. Now it’s cool to be “green.” There is so much pressure to be green that one might have an anxiety attack in the grocery checkout line when asked the simple question “Paper or plastic?” (For the low down on which is really best, check out this handy article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18538484)

How does this pertain to you, dedicated apartment management teams?  Well, if your community doesn’t already have at least a recycling program, you’re slipping behind the times.  Here are a few ideas to help you get caught up:

During the holiday season many businesses, including apartments, host charity events in the spirit of giving back. With the state of the economy some residents may not have extra cash to contribute to many causes this year. Ideal Bite, one of my fav going-green blogs, has a suggested giving back project that I think would be a fun/easy resident project.

Is figuring out what to do with your used kicks a total mystery? Here's a clue: Donate your old footwear to a reuse or recycling program to save landfill space or help out someone in need. Nice work, gumshoe.

The Benefits:

I thought it might be appropriate to pause from posting on marketing and leasing for a bit by featuring a cool product.

To preface - I have no direct affiliation with this Big Belly Solar nor have I seen it in action but it does hit my cool button. Not only that, it appears to be something that fits the apartment industry and its effort to be green. 

Here is a quick blurb from their website:  

I'm a hippie at heart.  In third grade, I decided that ecology was cool and have pretty much been hooked on saving the dolphins and trees ever since.  I didn't know it was science until I was way too far sucked in to decide it was too hard to understand.  Science is sneaky that way.  But, to me, dolphins and trees are totally worth it.

You've got $11 in your community budget for this one!

The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet one Simple Step at a Time


No doubt you already know that going green is a great trend in multi-family housing, as it is in most industries.  The planet isn't going to last forever, and it seems that the grand majority of Americans out there are finally understanding this.  Maybe it's that I live in hippie central up here in Seattle, but there's just no disputing that tree hugging is in.  It makes people feel good, and now anyone can be "green" without wearing itchy burlap or eating a bunch of tofu.

For apartments though, it can seem complicated.  Building "green" doesn't pay off for about 20 years.  Changing out your community's windows runs in the thousands of dollars.  Compact florescent light bulbs don't have the same immediate brightness that you get with incandescents which can lead to a poor presentation of the home, and the bulbs, while they last for up to 7 years, are definitely not the cheapest to implement community wide.

All that said, people are basing buying decisions on eco-friendliness.  If they weren't, those reusable shopping bags that every store has branded now wouldn't be so danged popular (and did you read Lisa Trosien's post on those?  It's not a good idea... it's a darned outstanding idea!), and $5 a light bulb wouldn't sound reasonable.  If you can afford to retrofit for a greener world then you should try it.  If you're building new, then build green, because what might take a while in profits will pay of huge in the court of public opinion and when it comes to getting leases, that's all that matters.  People need to feel that warm fuzzy from doing good by Mother Earth, and they need your marketing to give it to them.

So what is your average hippie-at-heart apartment management professional to do?  How about your die hard republican, gotta-make-money-in-this-market kind of manager?

Well, either way, you'd better get yourself a copy of The Green Book.  It's an easy read, only 224 pages, and those pages are packed with ideas and implementations from celebrities.  The book is full of great fun facts that you can use for your newsletters and could spark some new ideas for resident retention, such as community libraries (see my post later this week!!!), barter boards, or providing a drop off point for some hard to recycle items like cell phones and computer hardware (If you want some more great recycling tips for hard to dispose of items, check out the September and October issues of Real Simple magazine.  They had an awesome two part article on recycling from A to Z!).  It's a book loaded with great multi-family idea springboards!  Best of all, a good majority of the solutions in the book cost little to nothing to implement and are still a noticeable, and marketable, change in your community!

Go buy The Green Book. It probably costs less than you spent on that latte and your lunch.  Actually, buy a copy of it used on line or from half price books. It's even more eco-friendly that way.  Reused AND printed on recycled paper!  Probably with soybean based inks!  I love it!!!

What have you done in your communities to Go Green?