How much is recycled in your community? A newer study finds that residential recycling rates aren’t great.

• 27% of households do not have access to recycling.
• 43% of households recycle.
• Only 21% of residential recyclables are recycled correctly. 
• Of the materials that are improperly handled, 76% of them are improperly recycled before they leave a consumer’s home. 
• 87% of materials collected by a recycling facility end up going to a market for materials.

Recycling isn’t a difficult process, but it continues to confuse consumers. Much of this comes down to indecision on what is and isn’t truly recyclable. Moving to a new community often leads to changes in what is and isn’t recyclable, and guides to help out aren’t always readily available. 

My community doesn’t offer one local program. Instead, there are three main trash and recycling companies and many independent companies providing curbside service. Some bring it to one county processing facility and others bring it to another county. None of the curbside haulers have online lists of what is and isn’t recyclable, and the counties differ in what they’ll take.

We do our best, but it’s hard when no one can provide an exact list or make it clear what county they transport to. Worse, my hauler says it depends on the driver. It’s confusing, and I’m certain at some point that I’ve recycled something I shouldn’t or thrown out something recyclable. 

Communities need to have a cohesive source of information and better outreach, it would be far more effective. Make sure your community leaders are helping people within your community recycle vs. throw away things that could have been recycled. Here’s how you make that happen.

Assess Your Community’s Needs

First, you need to assess who is in your community. Look at the number of schools, businesses, and organizations that will be adding to the waste and recycling stream. How many residents are there? How many are in larger apartment buildings, HOAs, or multi-family homes?

Statistics show that only 37% of multi-family households have recycling programs available. It’s important to make sure that recycling is available, and it needs to be affordable for all. If there is a high percentage of low-income people within your community, they may not recycle due to the cost. That’s something to focus on. 

Encourage freecycling as much as possible. You might have a household looking to recycle egg cartons every week. Meanwhile, there’s someone who has chickens in desperate need of egg containers. A furniture maker may be looking for baby food jars to better organize small hardware like nails and screws. Teachers may be looking to save money by having yogurt containers for mixing paints for the children to use. Set up platforms where people can trade things like that. 

Make Information Clear, Concise, and Accessible

Before you even hold any public events or community outreach programs, make sure you have created informative posters, brochures, and flyers that people can take home or to their office, business, or school. Bundles for businesses, organizations, office buildings, and schools help a lot. If possible, have them laminated to ensure they last a long time.

As you update guidelines, make sure new materials are available to everyone. For example, you decide you can accept pizza boxes and colored glass jars and bottles. Make sure updated materials are available in areas community members frequent, such as town offices, libraries, and area businesses.

The materials you hand out need to be clear and concise. Not everyone is going to read as well as others. Some may not have English as their native language. Consider adding a QR code that allows the user to load a site on their phone that can be translated. 

Graphics and images need to accurately depict what you’re showing. A photo of a book may seem clear, but not if you require the cover to be removed first. If you require the caps to be removed from water and soda bottles because they’re smaller than 2 inches, don’t use a photo with the cap on. Use images that clearly depict the cap must be removed.

Provide Educational Opportunities

Make sure that you’re sharing information in as many channels as possible. Community outreach events are helpful, but will they help an elderly person who no longer drives? What about community members with disabilities who cannot leave the home without arranging transportation and ensuring a meeting place or event is fully ADA-compliant? 

Because not everyone will be able to attend an event, engage with everyone on social media, local news, radio, and newspaper articles. Send mailers to people in their homes. If possible, deliver resources directly to local businesses.

Come Up With Ways to Encourage Recycling

One of the best ways to get people to recycle is by offering prizes and giveaways that encourage them to get involved. For example, hold an e-waste collection at the town offices or wherever there’s room. Everyone who recycles items gets a raffle entry for a gift basket that local businesses fill with their goods. You could have several baskets so that there’s more than one winner.

Another option would be to host an event where people learn how to recycle. Host a competition where the person with the most accurate recycling rate wins a gift card to a local grocery store. During this event, your community outreach team could hand out cards or laminated posters with a complete list of what is and isn’t recyclable and how to recycle them correctly, such as taking caps that are smaller than 2 inches off a bottle.

Track Participation and Ask for Feedback

As programs get off the ground it’s important to measure their success rates. Track participation by community members and carefully monitor rates of recycling for each item. Has cardboard recycling increased? How about glass, plastics, and metal? If your community holds hazardous waste or e-waste drives, how has participation been? Is it increasing?

At the same time, send out mail-in or online surveys to see how the community members feel about recycling. Are you seeing the same issues mentioned? You have dozens of people saying the hours for a twice-yearly paint recycling fall within their work hours so they can’t participate. From those responses, you know that adjusting the hours might increase participation.

If you have a number of responses stating that they are tired of finding cardboard and paper recyclables blown around their neighborhood on a windy day, recycling bins that have covers would be a great solution to end that issue. Make sure the bins are large enough as people may start throwing away recyclables if there’s no more room in their weekly or bi-weekly pick-up bin.

Recycle Nation is the world’s largest recycling database, and we can help consumers find where to go to recycle dozens of common items. Enter the item name and your ZIP code, and instant results show you where to go. Make sure local facilities are entered in there. There’s an easy form for adding a location if your community facilities are missing.