Here’s a trash trivia question: who is the single biggest generator of it in Mission Viejo?

If you guessed the Shops at Mission Viejo, you’re right. About 110 tons a month, or 1,320 tons a year — a full two percent of the entire city’s trash.

To stem the trash tide, the Shops just received ten large recycling bins, city spokeswoman Kelly Tokarski said. They’re for shop owners and employees — customers won’t see a thing — and are placed in trash enclosures outside the mall.

The city and Simon Property Group, the management at the Shops, are trying to encourage tenants to recycle as much as half of the trash generated there.

The same company installed the nation’s largest mall solar array last year at the Shops. The recycling effort is part of a green push by the company.

While much of the mall’s present solid waste is sent to a waste-to-energy plant, a good chunk still goes to the landfill. Simon Property hopes to cut that amount by 35 to 50 percent.

That could mean a savings of more than $38,000 per year in trash-hauling costs.

(Photo of Simon Management employee Natalie Hanuska, with bin, courtesy city of Mission Viejo.)

Latest posts:

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.