For most Portlanders, recycling couldn’t get much easier.

Just throw paper, plastic and metal into a single bin and haul it to the curb once a week.

But there are plenty of city residents – those living in large commercial apartment buildings – who want to recycle, and simply can’t.

“It all goes into the garbage,” said Joan Bullock, who lives at Longfellow Commons on State Street. “It’s not easy.”

Where there is a will – and a frustrated, creative person like Bullock – there is a way. And the solution she came up with is getting lots of praise as a way to finally make recycling possible for a sizable segment of the city.

“It’s always that one single-minded individual who can take an idea and bring it to fruition,” said Kym Dakin, who works for the Portland Time Bank. Now, Dakin said, “We’re going to see how many other places can replicate it.”

The city does not collect recyclable items from apartment buildings with more than 20 units. Those buildings are considered commercial businesses and hire their own trash haulers. Residents are typically left to haul recyclables to collection centers, or throw them away.

The problem is that many residents of these buildings are seniors or disabled, or both, and have minimal incomes. Most don’t have cars, let alone any place to store cans and old newspapers, Bullock said.

Bullock discovered all this last year after she toured the new single-sort recycling center in Portland. It includes a massive Willy Wonka-like machine that separates glass, paper and different varieties of plastic and makes the chore simpler than ever for residents, especially those with curbside collection.

“I thought, ‘Wow, this isn’t too hard to do,’ “ she said. “And then I found out it was.”

She soon formed a plan.

Bullock and about a dozen other tenants who wanted to recycle formed a group called “Tenants Go Green” and joined the Portland Time Bank, a non-profit organization that matches people who need help with those who can give it.

A member of the time bank, for example, can earn “time dollars” by fixing someone’s leaky faucet, and withdraw them later when she needs someone to fix her computer.

The Longfellow Commons tenants started baking and sewing for other bank members, and they earned a total of 31 hours in a single day by gathering in the building’s community room to stuff and label envelopes for a non-profit agency.

Now, residents throw their wastepaper, paperboard and cardboard into four bins in the building’s lobby. Bullock started with paper because it’s so abundant, and less likely to make a mess in the lobby. “The bins are full every week,” she said.

A local guy who belongs to the time bank comes by once a week and hauls the recyclables to a collection center. In return, he earns 30 minutes each week toward guitar lessons from some other time bank member.

It’s the first project of its kind for the Portland Time Bank, although members offer other green services, such as organic lawn care and gardening and energy efficiency audits for families that want to lower their heating costs.

Now, the time bank and Ecomaine, the regional waste and recycling agency, are promoting Bullock’s solution for the city’s other apartment buildings.

“I hope that happens,” Bullock said. “I know that I am not the only one who is frustrated.”

That’s a start.

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