As Biddeford prepares to implement its new curbside recycling program July 1, there are a few loose ends to tie up, and one of those is addressing the apartment buildings that have been getting free city waste pickup.

The current approach to apartment building waste pickup is rather convoluted and unclear, thanks to a variety of exceptions and provisions instituted when the city stopped waste pickup for commercial properties and apartment buildings with six or more units in the 1980s.

At that time, an exception was made for approximately 120 of those properties, and these exemptions were codified in 2002.

The policy committee voted earlier this week to recommend an ordinance amendment that would end free waste pickup, effective July 1, for multi-family apartment buildings of six or more units that are under new ownership since July 2002.

At issue now are the 50 or so “grandfathered” properties that haven’t changed hands since 2002, which receive free city waste pickup services.

Per the committee’s proposal, the grandfathered buildings would do pay-per-bag waste pickup through the city and participate in the recycling program. Apartment buildings with six or more units that are not grandfathered, or were sold to new owners after 2002, would be on their own for waste disposal.

This proposal is a good first step, but it’s caused some confusion and disagreement about how to deal with the grandfathering provision, and we’d like to see it simplified.

Apartment buildings of six units or more are commercial properties. There’s no denying that these buildings are investments from which landlords seek to reap income. Cities are not in the habit of providing waste removal for businesses, so it makes sense that they would not extend this service to such apartment buildings, despite their residential nature.

Waste disposal is the responsibility of the owner of any commercial or income property, and a six-plus unit apartment building certainly rises to that level. It doesn’t seem fair, however, to allow the pay-per-bag option and recycling to the grandfathered properties and not others. We feel the city should take the step to clarify the process by extending this option to all apartment buildings, making an across-the-board change as the new recycling program is implemented. The date of change of ownership should not dictate a building’s waste removal options.

The most unfortunate part of this plan, as currently proposed, is that it will exclude many of Biddeford’s apartment-dwelling population from the new, curbside recycling program. If landlords of non-grandfathered, multi-unit apartment buildings are no longer covered by the city’s waste removal service, they will have to either rent a Dumpster or arrange for a private company to pick up trash on a regular basis.

With a significant portion of the city’s population living in apartments, it doesn’t make sense not to extend the pay-per-bag/recycling component to them, and goes against the environmental goals set for the program.

Perhaps all landlords could at least be given the option to pitch in a small amount to take part in the recycling program, thereby reducing their own waste removal costs.

While we agree that these apartment buildings’ waste removal should not be paid for by the city, we’d like to see recycling extended to all apartment dwellers just the same, rather than see a significant portion of the population dump their recyclables into Dumpsters.

Recycling is, in fact, most difficult for apartment-dwellers, who are less likely than homeowners to have a space to store those items until they can bring them to the transfer station. The curbside pickup option is ideal for those residents, and we’d like to see it extended to them, one way or another, as part of a simplification of the city’s waste pickup policy.

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Today’s editorial was written by Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski on behalf of the Journal Tribune Editorial Board. Questions? Comments? Contact Kristen by calling 282-1535, Ext. 322, or via email at kristenm@journaltribune.com.