Continental Development Corporation

Continental Development Corporation owns and manages several buildings in Blaine, leasing to 33 commercial businesses. In late 2015, property manager Courtnie Cook had an opportunity to switch waste haulers and drastically improve their recycling capabilities for all tenants. Before this change most tenants only had access to cardboard recycling. In order to ensure recycling improvements involved all tenants and transitioned as smoothly as possible, Continental Development reached out to Minnesota Waste Wise.

Continental Development brought Waste Wise in for a number of on-site meetings and discussions with store managers before ultimately deciding to outfit all tenants with their own internal recycling bins. With Waste Wise’s assistance, Continental Development was able to provide all of these businesses with recycling bins so every trash receptacle had a recycling option. Waste Wise then distributed the bins and provided recycling program information to all 33 tenants. In most cases Waste Wise was able to chat with individual store managers and employees about the new recycling program and discuss strategies for collecting the unique recyclable materials generated at each business.

“The tenants were very excited to improve their recycling programs,” commented Continental Development, “Waste Wise and Walter’s Recycling made it very easy for the businesses to recycle. Everyone loves the convenience of single sort recycling!” Clive’s Roadhouse, a restaurant affected by these changes, is probably the greatest producer of recyclable materials and has utilized the new program to a large extent. “Clive’s was able to add multiple recycling containers and now recycle many more items than we previously were,” commented Clive’s manager Cameron Brase.

A conservative estimate of recycling diversion predicts 29,490 pounds of recycling will be diverted from these 33 businesses waste stream every year following these recycling improvements and training. Continental Development is excited about these recycling improvements and is grateful for Waste Wise’s ongoing assistance. “The waste evaluations and recommendations provided by Waste Wise allowed us to determine what levels of recycling would suit each building, and Waste Wise’s ongoing assistance and the Anoka County grant made this transition seamless!”