Public Participation and Recycling Performance: Explaining Program Success

What determines the success of different local recycling programs? Following up on earlier research that focused on the design and management of solid-waste recycling efforts (see Folz's article in the May/June issue of PAR), David Folz and Joseph Hazlett attempt to discover how important local population, socioeconomic, and political characteristics are in determining the relative success of different programs. They find that such success depends more on the policies chosen, how they are selected, and how they are implemented rather than on local community characteristics. In short, although local conditions may determine which programs are selected, the ultimate performance of local recycling programs remains in the hands of their designers and managers.