As a Property Manager, you can only be as effective at waste management as your tenants. While it can be difficult to control tenant behavior, there are some interesting ways to influence positive trends, and instigate change.
Most building waste management work plans – required by law in Ontario (102/94) – focus on activities of building staff and cleaners. This makes sense, because you can directly control their activities. But the truly significant gains are usually made only with active participation by tenants.
Influencing tenant behavior means you first must understand it. This is where a comprehensive waste audit by tenant arms you with the benchmarks you need to pinpoint areas of potential gain. Having done this, you’ll need to answer the question of “what’s in it for me?” from your tenant’s perspective.
Finally, having determined What needs to be done, and Why it should be done, you need to outline How to get there, with minimal fuss and disruption. Big changes are difficult to implement. If you can incentivize small behavioural changes, on a regular basis, you can achieve greater long term gains.
Those gains will also help you attain buy-in for subsequent measures and initiatives. Everyone wants to be part of a proven success. And that’s where you can start to let peer pressure do the influencing for you.
