Shelley Pardy
Waste Diversion Communications Supervisor, City of St. John's
- PO Box 908
- A1C 5M2
- St. John's
- Canada
Topics
5 Comments
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Re: Effective Signage for Waste Diversion
2012-08-03 07:51:33 UTC
I want to thank everyone for your suggestions, comments and links to other resources. I have learned some new things, reinforced some of my beliefs and have new ideas to consider.
We have decided to go use the colours papers = grey, containers = blue and garbage = black on our bins. Thank you all for your clear message that colour prompts are important and that each waste stream should be a differnt colour. I also agree with trying to be consistent with other jurisdictions.
We will use the real pictures of items instead of illustrations or icons on our bins - partly due to recycling still being so new here (less than two years old) and that many of the workers and visitors in our city come from neighbouring communities that do not yet have recycling programs. We had originally had illustrations of recyclables but some of the items weren't clear, we didn't even know what they were supposed to be showing!
The bins we are outfitting now are ones my department 'inherited' and we have refurbished them as best we can. We cannot change the shape or size of the openings.
Thanks again for all your comments. Ruben I have watched your talk to the BC Recycling Council several times and have had my peers, employees and summer students watch it as well. The only person in my workplace that has not yet watched it is my manager - but I won't give up trying to get him to sit down for 30 minutes to see it!
Shelley Pardy
Waste Diversion Communications Supervisor
City of St. John's
Canada
http://www.curbitstjohns.ca -
Re: Effective Signage for Waste Diversion
2012-07-31 12:36:02 UTC
I am interested in any experience or comments that others have about this too. I have a comment and then I'd like to piggyback my similar situation on to the original post.
First my comments:
I am in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador and we introduced voluntary residential curbside recycling almost two years ago. One of the educational pieces we sent to residents prior to the program start was a fridge magnet using both text and images of recyclable items. We choose illustrated items to coordinate with our program branding. I've attached the fridge magnet.
Soon after the curbside recycling program began we received comments from some residents that they would like to see pictures of real items as opposed to illustrated items. From those comments we created a brochure that we mailed to all residents and use at events and other outreach activities. I've attached the brochures below - we receive a lot of postivie feedback about it.
Now for my situation:
We are currently designing signage to put on public recycling bins to align with our relatively new residential curbside recycling program. We have chose to use pictures of items for this rather than illustrations. At the curb we have two stream recycling, papers go in one blue bag and containers go in another. Garbage goes in a separate bag (most often black or green). We don't yet have curbside collection of organics so if residents are not backyard composting then organics go in with the garbage.
Our public bins are three steam. One point we are debating is separate colour coding for each type of waste or if we reiterate the bag colours we require at the curb. To have separate colours we are looking at recyclable containers are blue, recyclable papers are green or grey, and garbage is red or black. To reiterate what we expect at the curb it would be that both recyclable containers and papers are blue and that garbage is black or grey. I have attached a mock-up of each.
Our current debate centres around if we should have separate colour coding for each waste type to reduce the liklihood of contamination or if we should reiterate the bag colours we require at the curb. We have more than 70 per cent of residents participating in our voluntary program and have only about 3 per cent contamination in the blue bags. We want to create the bin signage to build on the success we are seeing in the homes be reflected in public spaces.
Shelley Pardy
Waste Diversion Communications Supervisor
City of St. John's
Canada
http://www.stjohns.ca/cityservices/environment/wastediversion.jsp -
Re: Prompts or Communication Materials to increase Sorting & Decrease Contamination
2010-12-25 09:26:30 UTC
The City of St. John's began collecting curbside recyclables (2 stream) in October 2010. We had a comprehensive media campaign (print, radio, web, out of home & some tv) for the month prior to the first pick-up and the month following. We plan for three more media blitz's in the new year in February, April/May and in the fall.
Aside from traditional media we have had the most positive response from three items in particular:
1) A Recycling Starter Kit that we sent to residents homes that included a booklet detailing the curbside recycling program as well as other waste management services offered by the city.
2) A fridge magnet & brochure that lists the most common household items to recycle, as well as what to continue to put in with garbage.
3) Sample packs of 4 free see-through blue bags, as our program requires that recyclables be put in blue bags.
We've done a number of visits to community groups & centres, schools, and interested businesses/institutions to educate them about the recycling program - specifically what is and isn't recyclable.
In my experience this is the main thing that people want to know: what can I recycle and when can I put it to my curb for pick-up. Then you give them an easy to read/understand brochure and a free pack of blue bags - they are all set and excited to start.
We do have two staff to conduct door to door visits (among other work duties) and though the door to door does give positive results it does take a lot of time to complete properly.
Shelley Pardy
Waste Diversion Communications Supervisor
City of St. John's
Canada
http://www.stjohns.ca/cityservices/environment/wastediversion.jsp -
Re: Webinar: The Recycle More NC campaign
2010-06-24 07:19:02 UTC
Great, thanks! I'll register now.
Shelley Pardy
Waste Diversion Communications Supervisor
City of St. John's
Canada
http://www.stjohns.ca/cityservices/environment/wastediversion.jsp -
Re: Unveiling the Recycle More NC campaign - Webinar - 6/25, 10am, EASTERN time
2010-06-23 08:57:11 UTC
Is this open to people outside of the USA? Is it free?
Shelley Pardy
Waste Diversion Communications Supervisor
City of St. John's
Canada
http://www.stjohns.ca/cityservices/environment/wastediversion.jsp
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