Recycling

Improving Recycling Rates

Many people are looking for ways to improve our recycling rates. The main areas that need to be addressed to accomplish this are education, marketing, simplification, and regular communication. When these efforts are combined residents become more willing to participate in recycling because the rules are clear and compliance is easily maintained. When communities fail to address these issues, even those who are honestly committed to the process find themselves questioning the process when they can not understand the rules that govern the process.

Education is the key to any process. However, for education to be successful it needs to be combined with a good marketing campaign. Often those who are seeking to increase recycling in a community fail to seek the help of good marketing consultants. They end up preaching to the choir. The audience they need to reach is ignored, and they continue to reach the audience who already is in compliance with recycling. The change that needs to occur is to identify the audience that is underperforming and find a way to positively market the idea to that audience. I have found trying to adjust people’s thinking to this reality is challenging. They continue to market recycling in the same method they always have and wonder why the results are dismal. The clear answer is that the target audience is hearing the message but they already are responding and their rate remains steady. There has not been a drop, so in that sense the marketing has not been a complete failure. However, marketing campaigns have completely failed to reach the target audience of residents not in compliance with the recycling regulations. Until the marketing and education campaigns match the target audience, do not expect to see a change in rates.

Two other important areas to target are simplicity and communication. When cities and towns constantly change the rules without providing any communication regarding the alterations to the recycling rules, even hard core proponents get frustrated. You can only imagine the impact on the less committed. The more complicated the cities and towns make the rules, the lower the levels of compliance one can reasonably expect. If raising the recycling rates is the goal, simplify, communicate and effectively market your education campaign.