Who handles your condo garbage collection?

I was surprised to get a notice the other day about our ‘dumpster free service’ at Trace. The notice instructed us to dump our garbage down the chutes, place larger items in the garbage room and that we were to use the provided bags for recyclables (and take those to the garbage room too.) Still having a lot of garbage in my unit I emailedl our property manager to ask when pickup day was because I didn’t want to overwhelm the garbage service and she said to take whatever I needed to downstairs and it would be dealt with quickly, maybe even daily.

I found this all a little puzzling since being woken up in the mornings by dumpster pickups and glass being empty into the recycling truck is a big part of downtown living. As is going to put your garbage or recycling in the bins and finding them completely overflowing.

Anyhow this service is all provided by a company called CleanScapes; then as I was eating lunch the other day I happened upon a copy of the Seattle Weekly and read their cover story, In the Future, Your Recycling Will Be Monitored and Dumpsters Will Be Trashed which is essentially an article about CleanScapes:

CleanScapes is tapping into the new garbage morality that arose with the recycling age and has only gotten more intense. To those who follow the creed, there’s a right and a wrong way to treat your trash, and Martin is quick to tell you which is which.

After reading the article it sounds like what we have at Trace is a boutique garbage and recycling collection service. I’m sure it isn’t cheap but it sounds clean, green and more importantly the right thing to be doing. The only thing puzzling me now is why our building has a garbage chute but not a recycling one.