Going green might be trendy but it’s also a labor of love. Luckily, the apartments of the Design District are doing their part to make going green easier for their apartment dwellers. All three complexes, including the Alexan Design District, Alta 1900 Lofts, and Alta Design District, offer valet trash and recycling services to their residents.

What does that mean? No more hauling your garbage to a trash bin hallways away and no more towing your recyclables to a city-designated drop off point. (Which also means no more smelly car trunk from forgetting to take out that big bag of beer cans from last week’s pool party…not that I would know!)

Living in a Design District apartment has recently inspired me to take an interest in recycling. (Hey, they made it easy — I might as well take advantage of the service!) My first snag came in finding a suitable home for side by side trash bins. After determining that the end of my island was the best looking and most convenient spot, I tackled the next problem: identifying which can would be for trash and which would be for recycling.

I made a couple of cute prints {above} and framed them to hang above each trash can. Now guests can throw their trash into the proper bin, saving me from having to dive elbow deep into trash in order to properly sort waste from recyclables. I’ve placed PDF files of each print in a “download” section below if anyone is interested in using them! (I also made three that say glass, paper and plastic for homeowners who have different sorting needs!)

Lastly, I created a handy “cheat sheet” that details which items are and aren’t recyclable. (The flyer from the trash company just didn’t look pretty enough on my refrigerator!) That is available for download below as well.

Now that you’ve got all the tools to get your own personal recycling station set up, pick up a couple of blue bags at your leasing office and start recycling!

Downloads:

• Recycle in Style: Recycle Printable (5 colors), 5 x 5 inches {975 kb}
• Recycle in Style: Trash Printable (5 colors), 5 x 5 inches {934 kb}
• Recycle in Style: Glass, Plastic, Paper Printables, 5 x 7 inches {893 kb}
• Recycle in Style: What to Recycle Cheat Sheet, 8.5 x 11 inches {586 kb}

Copyright/Usage: You are free to download and print these for your personal use only. Please do not attempt to resell or redistribute these designs.