An employee of a property management company in Lake Forest placed recycling bins in apartment buildings in Orange, San Diego and Los Angeles counties, as well as the Inland Empire.

In Huntington Beach, a mother and her 3-year-old daughter planted a tree.

Both won the Orange County Register’s “How I Went Green” contest, each receiving a $50 home improvement gift certificate.

Jessica Siderius, 27, who works for Allen Properties and lives in Aliso Viejo, was chosen as the winner by three judges – members of Orange County’s green community asked to evaluate contest entries.

Each contestant submitted a photo showing how they went green, along with a brief description.

“What Allen’s doing is maybe a great inspiration for other property owners,” said Delilah Snell, owner of the “Road Less Traveled” store in Santa Ana. “It’s possible, and it’s not that much work.”

Now that they have bins, the residents might consider how to reduce the amount of material they put into them with further acts of conservation, said a second judge, Laura Curran, part-time faculty member at Cal State Fullerton and head of “Green is Good” consulting.

Siderius said she had helped place other “green” items in some of the apartment complexes, such as energy efficient bulbs and low-flow toilets, and decided the recycling bins were a likely next step.

“I thought that was a good way of kind of encouraging people to recycle,” Siderius said. “I got together with the trash companies and talked about what our options were.”

(Photo of Jessica Siderius by Sam Gangwer, the Orange County Register.)

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