Looking for Multi-family Recycling Barrier and Benefit Research

Hi Ron,

I would also be interested in any multifamily research you receive as a result of this request.

I'm the conservation manager at King County Housing Authority, and we really struggle to educate residents about proper recycling.

Angela

Angela Wallis
Resource Conservation Manager
King County Housing Authority
United States

Ron:

Metro Vancouver has done some work in this area. A couple of reports are attached.

You might also be interested in the report Multi-Residential Recycling System Improvements - Residents, Superintendents & Property Managers Focus Groups & Interviews, conducted by the Association of Municipal Recycling Coordinators in Ontario http://www.solidwastemag.com/posteddocuments/PDFs/2007/EffectivenessEfficiencyFundMultirezReport.pdf

Graham Currie

Greetings Pacific Northwesterners,

I too am working on multifamily recycling, in Marion County, Oregon. We are in the process of concluding our pilot project (May to November 2008) and deciding what our County-wide program will be composed of.

I would be interested in sharing our experiences with recycling at apartment complexes; and I would also like to learn more about the benefits and barriers MF residents face. I joined this project towards the end of the pilot, and was repeatedly told to not compare multifamily to single-family, however, after attending Dougs CBSM workshop in October, learning more about CBSM, and spending time analyzing this pilot, I have found it has been useful to draw some comparisons to understand the underlying CBSM forces at work.

Examples pertaining to our recycling project are: in our single-family recycling service, each resident receives a 60-gallon blue roll-cart for mixed recycling to bring to the curb for pick-up. The equivalent to this in our multifamily recycling service would be on-site mixed recycling containers (former cardboard cages, or 60-gallon roll-carts), not the individual bins/bags given to go inside each unit. We do not offer a program that provides the single-family residents with collection containers for inside their house and observation shows that they have managed a method of their own to carry their recyclables to their roll-cart. This is of note for our pilot project because we analyzed the change in recycling behaviors of residents of apartment complexes by collecting data and analyzing three cohorts (1) complexes receiving educational materials, (2) complexes receiving educational materials and blue recycling tote bags, and (3) complexes receiving educational materials and blue recycling bins.

Additionally, what I have discovered, and it's rather basic, is that the number of on-site recycling collection containers, and ample cubic yardage space to place recyclables in, is of more importance than the provision of bins/bags per unit. Also, a basic lesson we re-discovered was how important motivated, on-site managers are to successful community recycling. This would be the modeling/social norm parallel to single-familys social diffusion/social norm from neighborhood pressure to put your roll-cart to the curb on collection day.

I think it is important to find the paralleling techniques for MF, so that CBSM can be utilized most effectively. Now that we know how important apartment managers and staff are, we want to devise creative ways to support them and offer ways for others to get motivated. I see feedback techniques and pledges to be of great value and hope to include these CBSM tools as resources in our multifamily community recycling program.

I would enjoy hearing others parallels or discoveries related to MF recycling/waste reduction and CBSM as well.

Cheers,
Melissa

Melissa Austin
United States

A few years back I did research in this area in neighborhoods of NYC where recycling was good (30%) and bad (8%). Check out www.maggieclarkeenvironmental.com - first link bottom left. I have more data, but haven't gotten around to publishing. Have others published their work?

Maggie Clarke
Maggie Clarke Environmental
United States
www.maggieclarkeenvironmental.com