Residents at local apartment complexes might soon have something better to do with things like used beer bottles and old newspapers.Fairway View Apartments on College Drive plans to launch a recycling pilot program with the Recycling Foundation for residents by the end of December. Apartment workers contacted the Recycling Foundation, said Aa’ron Johnson, residential life director at Fairway View Apartments.Even though the program is still in development stages, it’s a step forward for apartment recycling. No campus-area apartments have recycling pick up, said Tammy Cheatham, vice president for commercial services at the Recycling Foundation. Cheatham is working with the local chapter of the Sierra Club and the Environmental Conservation Organization, a student organization, to get recycling off the ground and educate tenants about proper recycling. Johnson hopes to have a bin in the apartment office within the next three months. They will start small, with a recycling bin in the office, and if that goes well, they hope to have more bins around the complex. The total cost is not yet available and depends on how many bins are purchased and how often the recycling is picked up.Johnson said the bin in the office will cost $400, but it will be worth it in the long run. Residents will be able to bring their recycling to the bin in the office.Apartment residents, managers and recycling companies have tried recycling programs with bins and dumpsters in the past but with little success. The programs failed because of widespread contamination and little participation among apartment managers.Contamination occurs when garbage, like food waste, grease and liquids is mixed with recyclables. Once a bin is contaminated, it becomes waste and cannot be processed by the Recycling Foundation, which doesn’t have the contract or the means to process trash. It’s a charge to the company to get rid of the excess waste, Cheatham said.  ”At home, you can control what you put in your recycling bin but with public dumpsters, you don’t know who has access,” said Bob Dillemuth, coordinator for community outreach and special events at the East Baton Rouge Recycling Office.The Baton Rouge Recycling Office, a city-parish agency, contracts out to the Recycling Foundation. The foundation is a materials recovery facility and picks up the curbside recycling in East Baton Rouge Parish. Steven Cheatham, vice president of residential services at the Recycling Foundation, said the foundation offered apartment recycling in Lafayette, but contamination of recycling dumpsters halted the program. ”We’ve tried to do apartment recycling throughout the history of our company. It’s a shame, but we are not allowed to be a dump site,” he said. The Recycling Office of East Baton Rouge Parish also attempted apartment recycling in the early ‘90s. It was a city tax-payer funded program that ultimately failed because of a planning oversight.About 35,000 14-gallon bins were distributed to apartments in Baton Rouge. Only 6 percent of apartment managers participated in the program, resulting in only 6,000 bins utilized, said Susan Hamilton, director of the Recycling Office. —-Contact Erica Warren at [email protected]