I am working on a project which is looking to increase waste diversion among people living in apartment buildings. A key issue we keep running into when we conduct tenant surveys is that people will simply check every possible answer to questions such as "Why do you recycle?" As a result, we are struggling to understand which community norms and attitudes to appeal to when developing new promotional material for our multires recycling program. We suspect that part of the problem is that many tenants are simply indifferent towards recycling. Does anyone have any thoughts or solutions to this problem?
Diedre Beintema
Organic Waste Leader
City of Hamilton Public Works
Canada
Recycling Indifference in Multi Residential Buildings
Sign in or Sign up to comment
Hi Lisa,
I think a couple of words might be reversed in that url, Try
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/solidwaste/Resources/Pages/default.aspx
The Resurces heading is a link itself.
My experience certainly aligns with what you are doing. I am travelling for the summer, so I can't post pictures of my neighbourhood cardboard bin signage and pilot--but I like where you are going,
Ruben Anderson
smallanddeliciouslife.com
Thank you to everyone for so much useful information.
I have been visiting many MF communities in Ann Arbor, Michigan wondering why so much recycling is being thrown into the 6 cubic yard (catch all) trash dumpsters and so little is being put into the numerous 96-gallon single stream recycling carts that are located next to each dumpster.
I am trying to find ways to help residents in MF communities divert more of this recyclable material from their trash dumpster. Recycle Ann Arbor provides multiple days of service at MF locations so they have room in their carts for more recycling during the week. We were finding that the carts were filling up before the next service day (once a week), so many residents began to throw the recycling away because the carts were full.
We also provide EPU (one time- extra pickup services) to businesses and MF locations that have a large amount corrugated cardboard, to provide them with more opportunities to recycle.
We are also looking to replacing some of the 96-gallon carts at MF/businesses with larger 300-gallon recycling carts to see if that helps divert larger recyclable items such as boxes and larger amounts of recycling from trash dumpsters. With many businesses, such as gas stations and retail stores that have a lot of corrugated cardboard, we find that replacing larger 6-8 cubic yard trash dumpsters with a few smaller (96-gallon carts)and dropping a 6 cubic yard recycle dumpster helps diver large amounts of recyclable materials.
The City of Ann Arbor and I have been contemplating whether providing indoor recycling bags and rigid bins might help increase recycling participation at MF locations. I believe that having a hands-on educational program in conjunction with such give away devices is the only way to successfully achieve any increased level of participation. The Ecology Center (parent company of Recycle Ann Arbor) provides recycling education in Ann Arbor schools at many different grade levels.
Our youth is where our focus to change the over-consuming "bad habits" into more sustainable ways of living should be. There is where our high hanging fruit is-CHILDREN! In return, we will get buy-in from their parents and other live-in relatives (grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters) regarding these sustainable messages because the young take what they learn home with them (especially if they get a recycling bag or rigid container during such school presentations to use at home).
Heather, can you keep us updated as to whether the MF Recycling Bags that are distributed by the Master Recycler Volunteers/contractors have helped to increase recycling volumes at MF communities in Washington County? I would be very interested to hear what you find out and other community resources that you (and others) have developed with such indoor recycle bag/bin community programs.
Another issue that we encounter is a variety of different languages and cultures being drawn to Ann Arbor with the University of Michigan nearby. Many MF property managers have difficulty in communicating with their ESL populations. We are looking for ways to overcome such barriers.
I am looking to create a MF community recycling poster that utilizes uniform (recycling message icons) to assist MF communities in providing ways to educate this larger population. I would appreciate any community resources in this regards too.
I found Ruben's "Top Ten Myths of Behavior Change" video very enlightening. The link; http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/solidwaste/Pages/Resources.aspx
doesn't work. I tried it twice. I really would like to be able to view this information.
I have spent most of the day (today) reading and researching all of these reports, research, book titles and video resources. I will continue to read through all of this material.
Recycle Ann Arbor is a non-profit organization that is the City of Ann Arbor's recycling contract hauler.
Lisa Perschke
Business Recycle Coordinator
Recycle Ann Arbor
United States
www.recycleannarbor.org
Thanks for a wonderful post.In connection,Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, wants to basically ban every little thing anybody loves though one ban he has in mind has a respectable enough rationale. Bloomberg is touting a Styrofoam ban, as the stuff is very challenging to do away with due to high costs of collection and recycling. You may need a payday loan to pay for things if a more expensive material is used instead of Styrofoam.
Julia Miller
United States
And lastly, for those who expressed interest in more info--since there were several people I will just try to write a list here...
Again, since I tried to get everything together in one spot, I think my video is a great place to start... ;-)
Ruben Anderson's Top Ten Myths of Behaviour Change
Top Ten Myths of Behaviour Change at http://vimeo.com/26943709
I made this before I had truly come to grips with the importance of the system, and of flocking behaviour in the social context. Still, it is pretty good.
I gave a Pecha Kucha about Compassionate Systems recently, and sometime that will get put online--hopefully soon.
And Metro's resources are available at http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/solidwaste/Pages/Resources.aspx
--as Peter for the Blue Book and Jerry for Food Scraps--especially the annotated brochure...
As far as background research"
David Rock's Google talk of Your Brain at Work is in my top two, then read his book, "Your Brain at Work"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJSXfXep4M
Along with Your Brain at Work is Creatures of Habit by the Social Market Foundation
http://www.ogilvychange.nieku.com/assets/Materials/SMFCreaturesofHabit.pdf
I print out the chart on page 14 and give it to everybody I can. Everything is in here--all of the systems stuff, financial stuff and CBSM stuff has a slot on this chart.
My only complaint with this chart now is that I think the system is overwhelmingly important. As Rock says, most of the stuff in Creatures of Habit is highly energy-demanding, and this is a recipe for failure. Systems must be changed, but everything on this chart is presented as equally important. I would say the work under External Factors> Effort >Make Desirable Behaviour Easier is where we should be focussing most of our work.
Creatures of Habit makes it clear how important--Habits--are. The grandaddy if this Daniel Kahneman. His new book is Thinking Fast and Slow.
Then this essay by Donella Meadows on Leverage Points--very, very good, and very, very important.
http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf
Following up on the importance of systems is probably the book Nudge, by Thaler and Sunstein.
Following up on the cognitive limitations presented by David Rock-- the man behind it all is Dr. Roy Baumeister. Dozens of books and hundreds of papers--this guy is a heavyweight. He is most famous for his work on Willpower, and that is the name of his most recent book, but all of the stuff he found about willpower applies to decision-making. Here is a nice little article about him. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/07/why-willpower-matters
I still haven't read Willpower, though I would like to because I always like to go to the original source. I have read several of his papers. For most people I think it is safe to trust that David Rock's conclusions are based on lots and lots of research by people like Baumeister.
Then I would read Tom Crompton at WWF-UK
http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/campaigning/strategies_for_change/
I used Common Cause the most, then Weathercocks and Signposts. The other reports are less important for our work, I think.
I believe deeply in the value of good framing, because, as I noted in my summary on behaviour change, I think the Social Context is so important. I am not so sure of the importance of Values, which Crompton promotes. As I said above, I have always worked from the other end--change behaviour, and people will change their values. Anybody who has surveyed recycling knows people's values are very pro-recycling, but the behaviour is not. So I think WWF is weaker here, but there is so much research, so much strong stuff, and Crompton is clearly a total genius.
On Framing, read George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant.
Communications and Behaviour Change is excellent.
http://www.behaviourworksaustralia.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/commongood-behaviourchange.pdf
This is the publication that lead to the study that found information is only 1% of the influence on behaviour change. See footnote nine, then spend a couple of weeks googling to track the original author... ;-)
But remember, as Donella Meadows makes clear, and as several stories in this thread have reported, the system is the most important.
The importance of the social context is laid out in I'll Have What She is Having. An essay by the two authors can be found at http://herd.typepad.com/files/bentleyearlsadmap.pdf
I think this is super important. Bentley's first book is called Herd, but I think this one is much, much better.
For added punch to the importance of social context, read Honest Signals, by Sandy Pentland, at MIT. This is mind-blowing stuff.
And then, if you are still having fun, read the crop of pop stuff--Switch, Sway, Predictably Irrational and the Upside of Irrationality, and many more.
I actually follow Dan Ariely's blog. His research on irrationality has lots of interesting stuff--one of the most important is the need for meaning in our work. If we don't feel what we do is meaningful, we stop doing it pretty quick, or do a bad job. So how meaningful do your residents think recycling is?
I hope that keeps you busy this winter. Again, feel free to write me if you want still more info, or to talk about consulting.....
Specific to recycling in MF, check out our report on this forum.
http://www.cbsm.com/forums/index.lasso?p=10029
Cheers,
Ruben.
Ruben Anderson
Lastly, here is a photo of the efficacy of signage. Three signs banning dumping and one sticker about banned materials--and look at all that dumping. Tee hee.... we need to do other things than put up signs.
"Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result."
Ruben Anderson
And here is an excerpt on Behaviour Change....
Ruben Anderson
Here is a little summary on the need for a Theory of Change.
But, to excerpt the excerpt:
Carol Weiss popularized the term Theory of Change as a way to describe the set of assumptions that explain the steps that lead to the long term goal...and the connections between program activities and outcomes that occur at each step of the way.
Weiss...hypothesized that a key reason programs are so difficult to evaluate is the assumptions behind them are poorly articulated. She argued that stakeholders of complex community initiatives typically are unclear about how the change process will unfold and therefore place little attention to the early and mid-term changes that need to happen in order for a longer term goal to be reached.
So Weiss argues we are typically unclear about how change happens. Our programs do not include clearly articulated statements about what the barrier is, and how we are going to overcome the barrier(s).
Sadly, this does not mean we do not have a Theory of Change. We do. It is just not not explicitly stated. It is also probably wrongand it is hard to determine where it is wrong because it is not explicitly stated.
Ruben Anderson
I just posted a pdf and my interpretation of Metro's garbage composition studies. It is being held to be checked, so check back soon. I am also going to post a couple of excerpts that were cleared by Metro.
Cheers,
Ruben.
Ruben Anderson
I asked for permission to share a few files, so here is the data sorting I mentioned. This is from garbage composition data that Metro publicly releases on the metrovancouver.org website.
I will give a little running commentary if you want to follow along:
Page one shows amount recycled vs. amount thrown away in four sectors
ICI - Industrial, Commercial, Institutional
DLC - Demolition and Land Clearing
SF - Single Family
MF - Multi Family
The thing I find so interesting about this page is that approximately the same number of people live in SF and MF. Everyone gets all mad at MF for not having a great recycling rate, but SF buys three times as much crap. The First R is much more important, and so I think SF is a much bigger problem than MF. As I said earlier, I think MF is living in the future, and is consuming a much larger share of service systems liked shared gyms, theatres, and car sharing
Page 2 and 3
For reasons that will be apparent on Page 5, I chose to look at only the top 100 categories from Metro's garbage composition study.
Page 5
Look at that Long Tail! 83% of all garbage in in the Top 100 categories! ONE THIRD of all garbage is in the Top TEN!
Page 6 is the same chart, but colour coded to show which sector it comes from. The Tree Chart in the top right corner shows the relative amount of garbage from each sector. So the ICI sector, which is not required to provide so much as a single blue bin--SURPRISE!--has the most garbage.
(pet peeve--pie charts are very difficult for humans to judge accurately. Comparing the area of multiple wedges is not a gift we have evolved with. Tree charts, which use rectangles, are much easier for us to compare accurately. There are free online tree chart makers. I never use pie charts to convey serious info, only general ideas.)
Page 7
The Top 100 by material. There is only one category of glass in the Top 100 and very little plastic (though the impact of plastic is distorted by its light weight). I was shocked by all the diapers and pet waste, which I will talk more about soon.
Rocks and sand don't hurt anything, except in the fuel to truck them to the dump.
By far the biggest category is Food and Yard Scraps, which need to get composted. Then PAPER, which is recyclable in existing blue box systems--though those systems seem to usually be drastically undersized and inadequate. Then wood, which is a problem that needs good attention.
(I used a pie chart to show relative size, since the actual tonnage is shown by the numbers on the bar chart)
Page 8
Oh my word, look at all that food. Restaurants and grocery stores need to be REQUIRED to have food scraps collection.
And look at all that paper. Businesses need to be REQUIRED to have blue box recycling.
All of our sad little business education programs...who has the money to do the outreach and marketing we would need to succeed with those tools? I have never seen that. Regulation is what will shift those numbers.
I by regulation, I mean I think it should be illegal to sell garbage-only service. Every business and home should have Food Scraps, Recycling and garbage. That is just how it needs to be. We can't collect all that food and paper until there are totes and dumpsters to put it in.
This is an important distinction about regulation. You can regulate the system or you can regulate the people. So, there is a law that all new cars must have seat belts, and there is 100% compliance. There is also a law that every person must use a seat belt, and the compliance is noticeably lower.
So, it is illegal to throw paper in the dump. The humans are regulated, and 50,000 tons of it end up in the dump every year. The system must be regulated so every business has recycling for the people--who already recycle at home--to use.
Page 9
Diapers? We get so bent out of shape about plastic shopping bags, but almost nobody has a diaper plan. How about an eco-tax on disposables used to subsidize laundered reusables?
How amazing that paper towel is the fourth largest category. The first R means that should replaced with a dishcloth, not with composting or recycling. Paper towel just shouldn't be there in the first place. This is a cultural problem, not a recycling problem.
And paper towel really shows the problem with pie charts--most garbage composition charts just have a huge yellow wedge called paper. But the BEHAVIOUR of reading a newspaper over breakfast is totally different from wiping up a spill. Telling people to recycle paper isn't helpful, because nobody thinks, "I am going to go consume some paper". They think they are going to eat breakfast, and what eating breakfast means is reading the news over coffee.
So we need to change the story of wiping spills back to dishcloths.
Page 10
Wood is really the only story here. We need to be thinking about Reduce and Reuse, not chipping wood up to be burned.
Page 11
Again, look at all that food.
Then newspaper, which as I mentioned earlier means the newspaper publishers need to be regulated. This newspaper is not brought home by residents. It is dumped there in huge piles by publishers trying to maintain a high "circulation" number they can sell to advertisers. Hey Advertisers! You are being cheated!
Next, pet waste. Does anybody have a plan? How can we get so ticked off at MF when we don't have a clue how to deal with this stuff? I will say, plastic poop bags must be banned, and replaced with biodegradable. Then at least we have a hope of composting this stuff somehow.
Page 12
I took the Top 100 and grouped them together in ways that made sense from a behaviour change perspective. So food and yard scraps are lumped together, but paper towel is not, because it should be eliminated, not composted. All the unfinished wood from every sector is lumped together, etc.
Look how big garbage bags are. This is the garbage we make and sell, just to hold our garbage while we throw it away. Thousands and thousands of tons of brand new garbage bags. (by the way, very few plastic shopping bags are used to hold garbage--most are just thrown away. So ban plastic shopping bags too)
Ruben Anderson
Thank you all for your comments, I am glad our work at Metro will be useful to other people and groups.
Heather, it looks like you have been doing great work in Washington County.
Regarding collection service levels, let me see if I can dig out our numbers...
We tried to figure out how best to estimate volume--per person, per unit, per whatever....it can be hard to find how many people are in a suite, and different suite sizes would really change the amount of garbage produced.
Because we were working with our own housing corporation, we were able to get pretty good occupancy numbers, so we decided that using a Per Bedroom number was the best. That allowed us to refine for everything from bachelors to four bedroom townhouses....I just found an old spreadsheet....
We found an average occupancy of about 1.2 people per bedroom. That is about 590 people in about 480 bedrooms in 202 units. (the approximations are due to vacancies and renovations).
On that site we had 75 (96 gallons) recycling totes, eight 3 yard cardboard dumpsters emptied every two weeks, and food and 18 (96 gallon) yard scraps totes emptied every week.
To compare to your per unit numbers, that makes about 4 yards of recycling, 3 yards of cardboard and 2.5 yards of food and yard scraps collection capacity per unit per year.
On the topic of signage, I would like to mention some of the work we did on icons, photographs and colours. It looks like your work is right in line with some of this.
Colours first--I trained as an Industrial Designer (which means designing the mass-produced crap we are all trying to keep out of the dump). In Ergonomics they told us to use multiple signals. So, if you are designing the knobs that control the boom of a crane, you would make them different shapes, different textures and different colours. So, one knob might be a studded, red cube, while another might be a ribbed, blue sphere. This gives multiple ways of gaining information, even if you are colour blind or have other sensory differences.
Looking at a traffic signal, you can see it uses colours and the position of the light. Imagine if cities saved money by putting three different-coloured bulbs in just one lens housing. Since there would be no change in the light position, colour-blind people would be causing accidents all over the place!
So, we used the words Yes and No, which are great for English speakers--but in Metro Vancouver, half of the population is ESL. So, we also used a check and X symbol, which is used a lot in Asia. And, we used red and green as a final signal (red is a festival colour in Chinese cultures, so we did some research to determine if using red to signal Bad or Danger would be confusing--it is clearly understood by people of Chinese origin).
I think the use of a red octagon is very good, but with the three layers we had, we felt we could allow ourselves more design freedom.
So, we used a specific colour for each stream, as well as red and green for brochures and signage as you have shown. As you say, it is really important to standardize this as widely as possible--I would like to see the same colours across all of Canada. The idea of having businesses and schools with their own systems is idiotic.
It is idiotic because the thing we are trying to build is recycling habit. Imagine if light switches were hidden around the room, not at the same height by the door. How easy would it be to build habits of turning lights off? So having to learn several systems to recycle in different places actually makes everyone's work harder and less effective. Business recycling actually would weaken the effectiveness of residential recycling. Because of this, I think recycling signage standards should be regulated at at least the provincial level, if not nationally.
And talking about regulated signage is a good time to segue to icons and photographs--another thing Metro tested, with the Psychology Department at UBC.
But, if you don't have a Psych Department handy, you can look around the world and make pretty good sense of things.
Traffic signs are a great example. They are always the same colour, same shape, and are at the same height, and if necessary in the same spot. So Stop signs are red octagons, on the right hand side of the lane, at about 7 feet up, before the intersection. They aren't different colours, they never use different type (imagine a heavy Gothic font--hilarious and idiotic). If they are hidden behind a bush you can challenge your ticket.
And they never have a picture of a car stopping on them. Pictures contain millions of bits of information, thousands of details. You don't want people to process all that, you just want them to stop.
Highway signs never have a picture of the skyline of the city. Imagine if you had to try to memorize the skyline, let alone what different neighbourhoods look like. That would be idiotic. Instead icons and text are used. And let's remember, text is a kind of icon--it is an abstract representation.
So, history and experience have proven that in situations where you want people to make quick decisions--like driving--you give them as little information as possible to get the job done.
This means our blue recycling bins are perfect with the triangle of chasing arrows. If you want to collect newspaper, it would be best if the bin itself was yellow (in Metro) but at least the blue bin should have a giant yellow sticker on it. The yellow bin should have a very clear ICON of a newspaper on it, and the word NEWSPAPER, in very clear text. etc. etc.
Photographs are very good at conveying much more detailed information, which is useful when you don't need someone to make a quick decision. This is good for information and education--photos are good for details, like which kinds of bottles are accepted.
Again, anybody who is interested in this, please contact Peter Cech at Metro Vancouver and ask him for the Blue Book pdf and InDesign document. This is a very graphic, text-light, information booklet. This gives people the details they need to sort properly--and it links them all back to the ICONS. So at the top of every page is the icon of the stream--say newspapers. And the photo on that page shows all the things that are acceptable--newspapers and shiny inserts. Trying to do an icon for shiny inserts would be incomprehensible and counterproductive. You don't want to teach people at the Blue Bin, they need to know what they are doing before they get there, they need the habit in place. Otherwise, everything goes in the trash.
Keeping this in mind, when we piloted the Food Scraps Recycling, we built a very strong hierarchy of information. We had the Yes/No sticker for the countertop collection bucket and a Yes/No sticker on the tote in the alley. We inverted our information brochure, so all the boring and pointless blather about how great their municipality is went at the back while the emotional images went at the front and the useful information went in the middle. We deleted something like 100 Frequently Asked Questions down to about eight, and put them in the brochure. We put the full list of 100 FAQs, plus more tips on the website. Lastly, we had a composting hotline.
Hotline stats and our follow-up surveys showed the hierarchy worked perfectly. The sticker on the bucket answered 80% of the questions, the brochure answered most of the rest, with the website taking care of almost anything else, and almost no calls to the hotline were needed.
The Yes/No sticker on the alley tote reminds me of one of my pet peeves, which is putting lots of information on dumpsters or totes--big stickers, signs or labels.
CBSM is very clear that prompts need to be located AT THE RIGHT POINT IN TIME AND SPACE. Reminders to turn out the kitchen light are useless inside the fridge. By the time you get around to leaving the kitchen, you forgot the prompt hidden in the fridge. Light prompts should be on the light switch, or hanging on a sign your kid bumps into as they try to leave their bedroom. Composting stickers need to be on the countertop bucket, or at least inside a cupboard door for those with fancy stainless kitchens. By the time you get out to the back alley, all of the choices have been made. Very, very few people would go back inside and re-sort their compost or recycling. They will throw it in, causing contamination, or throw it away.
Which means all the outdoor signage reminding people to recycle are pretty useless. I am interested to see some of the results of places that are using things like Gold Bins to reward super-recyclers.
To reinforce one of the main points of my video, we are physically limited in the amount of time and energy we have to think about things, and usually we use most of our brain energy for things like working. We don't have a lot left for recycling. Forming habits is how our brain gets things done while using very little energy, so the thing we must do is try to build habits in our residents. Building habits takes a lot of effort, which is what people don't have to give us, so we must make new habits as easy as possible. Standardizing colours and icons is an important part of that, as is using photos only where necessary.
So, the picture of the bag Heather attached looks really good. It may be worth thinking about using icons on the bag and photos in different materials, but without knowing more about her situation and other materials I can't really say.
Best,
Ruben.
Ruben Anderson
Hi there,
Thanks to Ruben for his post very helpful. We dont have the resources for such an in-depth study so I appreciate the sharing of others' findings.
After viewing your video, I am inspired to approach our next business program campaign with a different lens.
Walking through hundreds of our multifamily properties has helped to focus my attention on addressing what the resident encounters on a daily basis when they toss unwanted items how far do residents have to walk, what type of containers are they looking at, are the containers well labeled, property sited, are recycling-only enclosures distinguishable from garbage-only enclosures, which containers are overflowing, etc. It seems that the more of a no brainer (i.e. no pre-frontal cortex needed :)) it is for the resident to put an item in the correct container, the easier my job is.
Ive attempted to develop our multifamily recycling program with the idea that the infrastructure needs to solidly support the outreach and education. No point in newsletters, brochures, door-to-door outreach and bags if the resident simply cannot follow-through because of the propertys infrastructure.
Collection Service Level
We have been distributing recycling bags for a few years in the multifamily community. However, before I provide the bags to a community, I conduct an on-site evaluation. The community needs to have a minimum amount of recycling collection service available to residents. I have found that encouraging recycling behavior in a community that already has overflowing recycling containers is counter-productive and leads to frustration from residents. It is also a waste of our staffs efforts and our budget.
After a few years of informal data collection I have figured that, on average, properties need at least three cubic yards of mixed recycling (commingled) collection service per unit per year. This does not include glass collection service. It may not be ideal at every community, but it is a good starting point for most properties in our area. If other programs use a quantitative service goal, I would love to know about it.
Consistent Color Scheme/Images
We have instituted a consistent color scheme based on material type and not audience (as we had in the past) and have encouraged adjacent counties and cities to use the same color scheme. For example, we had previous used a Business Recycling Blue for our business recycling program. We now use Mixed Recycling Blue, Glass Bottle/Jar Recycling Orange and Food Scraps/Yard Debris Green in all applicaable programs: Single Family, Multifamily, Business, Events, and Schools. The same folks that live in apartments, also work in businesses and attend schools; it seems unnecessary to have them try and distinguish between 3 different recycling programs where the collection and processing of the materials are essentially the same. Our enclosure signage, container decals, brochures, and recycling bags reflect this color scheme. If you can coordinate the color of the collection containers along these lines such as San Francisco has done - even better.
Multifamily Recycling Bags (pic attached)
Weve printed the Yes instructions the front and back and the Nos in the gutters. As a result, the recycler will have the instructions at hand, at the point-of-action for as long as they use the bag. The instructions are graphic-heavy to minimize communication barriers based on text language or reading level.
If agreed to by the property manager, we distribute the bags door-to-door via trained Master Recycler Volunteers or contractors. My hope is that a face-to-face interaction and a presentation of this helpful gift will resonate with the residents more than simply hanging the bags on the door. On a good day, we can talk with folks at 30% of all units in a community. They will often ask related recycling questions and in general have responded really well to this method of distribution.
Again, I really enjoy reading about the recycling programs in other locations and am grateful for your expertise.
Heather Robinson
Recycling Project Specialist
Washington County
Solid Waste and Recycling
155 N. First Ave MS#5
Hillsboro OR 97124
Phone: 503-846-3660
Website: www.WashingtonCountyRecycles.org
Heather Robinson
Washington County
United States
I echo the show of appreciation to Ruben and others for your thoughtful and information-packed responses. Very helpful. I also have evidence, though not so scientifically gathered, to support Ruben's argument for providing sufficient infrastructure.
I'm in the Buffalo Niagara region of New York, U.S.A. Two of the larger municipalities decided to switch to carts/totes from bins and it was successful for all involved. Now our smaller municipalities are also switching. For the municipalities that we service, we've seen increased recycling rates in communities that make that switch. City of Buffalo also increased recycling rates with a switch to totes. This is primarily single family, but I imagine if we looked specifically at multi-family we'd see the same response.
Many of our municipalities switch to every other week recycling when adding the totes. This requires sending at least an annual flier to remind them of their recycling week and we also include the recycling menu of acceptable/not acceptable items. So some of that increase probably comes from people not being aware of certain materials we now accept for recycling that we didn't a few years ago.
I sat in a meeting with the Town Supervisor for one of the larger towns that we service and he said when his recycling bin fills up, the rest of the recycling goes in the trash. He knew he should recycle it (he's both a doctor and a lawyer, so well-educated), but he had gotten to that point Ruben described - it was just too inconvenient to do the right thing. This situation, which he assumed was true for many others, was his motivation for changing to totes. I was surprised at his response to a full bin, and his candor about it, but I'm learning that this type of response is quite common.
Sometimes we get grumbling about the size of totes and space they take up, but once implemented people are generally pleased. They are also easier to get to the collection point since you wheel the material instead of carry it, which is helpful for senior citizens and people who have a lot of paper.
Katy
Katy Duggan-Haas
Sustainability Program Coordinator
Modern Recycling
United States
www.moderncorporation.com
Ruben, thank you again for this scholarly and entertaining post and references.
Peter Tait
Australia
Ruben, How thoughtful of you to share this infomation with us. I agree with the rest of the team(Organic Waste Leaders) this infomation is refreshingly insightful. I truly enjoyed reading your response and i so greatly appreciate the suggestions given to assist with the challenges of recycling in muti-residential buildings. It is our hope to increase waste diversion in multi-residential apartments and i believe this discussion has given us a deeper focus.
The video was very infomative and if you have any additional materials that will help with our project, please feel free to send it to us.
Regards,
Rennae Baker
Organic Waste Leader
City of Hamilton
Canada
Ruben, as many have already said, thank you so much for sharing your considerable knowledge. Already it has really helped to work through some of the problems that we've been facing when it comes to the challenges of recycling in multi-residential buildings.
As Adam mentioned, the video you posted was excellent and we certainly plan to use some of your points when developing our multi-res approach.
If you have any material that you think would be of use to us, my email is [email protected]
Thank you again for your contribution, we really appreciate it!
Diedre Beintema
Organic Waste Leader
City of Hamilton Public Works
Canada
Wow, your information has been very helpful, and I thoroughly enjoyed your video. This has provoked much thought, and has enforced a lot of things I have been thinking about implementing. I would deffinately like to see some more books and studies. My email is [email protected]
Thanks so much!
Adam Lagrou
Organic Waste Leader
City of Hamilton Public Works
This is for Mr. Ruben Anderson: thank you so much for taking what must have been a significant amount of time to share your knowledge and experience with us. That is hands-down the post informative post I have read on this forum!
Again, my heartfelt thanks for your contribution.
Lauren
Lauren Maris
Environmental Program Specialist
The City of Red Deer
Canada
Great input! Will look into your links, and discuss these points amongst our team.
Liz Enriquez
Waste Reduction Technical Analyst
City of Hamilton
Canada
Thanks Ruben, that was immensely useful, dashes notwithstanding ;-)
Karen Mason-Bennett
Program Coordinator
NEAT
Canada
Sorry, I see the forum deletes all the long dashes I used, so some of the words are mashed together...
Ruben Anderson
Hi Diedre,
A survey will likely be a total waste of time.
I worked at Metro Vancouver for three and half years, where I researched Behaviour Change and ran pilot projects in Multi-family buildings. I presented at the Recycling Council of BC's annual conferenceyou can watch my Top Ten Myths of Behaviour Change at http://vimeo.com/26943709
For our MF pilot, we had two very large sites200 townhouses eachand several smaller sites where we did very targeted tests.
At one of our townhouse sites we saw the diversion rate go from 8% to 36% over a few years. I am extremely confident about these numbers, as we weighed every single recycling tote on a bathroom scale every single week. I have probably have the finest detailed data set on MF recycling in North America.
In proper CBSM fashion, we did a survey of our two big sitesabout 400 homes. We got a response rate of about 70%, which I think it is safe to say is excellent (more on how we did that later). As you noted, people would check all that boxesrecycling is good for the planet, good for the economy, good for the children, good for whatever... They would also check all the pro-environmental motivation boxes. Basically, if you recycle you will go to heaven. And there was only an 8% diversion rate.
So we had a very detailed surveyabout 100 questionswith open-ended, multiple choice, scales, everything. My co-worker had a Master's in Public Policy and was able to crunch the survey with SPSS. So we had someone trained in survey design, a 70% response rate and a very detailed survey which we could analyze with powerful softeare, and we got very little useful information.
I spoke with the pollster Angus McAllister, of McAllister Opinion Research. He is a very good pollster and does lots of work for groups like the Suzuki Foundation. He was the pollster for the massive environmental survey Suzuki, and Hoggan Associates, and a bunch of government bodies did in BC about 8-10 years ago.
Angus said if you want to know how people feel about the colour red, you never ask them how they like the colour. You show them a picture of a guy in a red sweater and ask how they feel about the guy. Then you show a different group a picture of the same guy in a blue sweater, and ask them how they feel about the guy.
There is a fascinating essay called Telling More Than We Can Know. http://people.virginia.edu/~tdw/nisbett&wilson.pdf This is one of the most-cited papers in psychology. The authors find that we know what we want, but we don't know why we want it. We are post-hoc rationalizers.
We know what we want, but we don't know why we want it, so we choose a reasonable sounding story to explain our behaviour. So asking people why they recycle is simply asking them to tell you a reasonable sounding story.
I checked this with another pollsterwho had just completed a huge survey in the Lower Mainland for a large philanthropical NGO (about 10,000 respondents). He agreed that this is basically true about surveys, and that surveys are quite limited in the sort of useful information they can gather.
So the reason you are not getting useful information out of your survey is that surveys don't work in your situation.
Why do people think recycling is important? Who cares? They say they do. In Metro Vancouver there are probably a dozen people who don't know you should recycle newspaper. Newspaper has been collected since 1989 with the first Blue Box. People come up with all sorts of reasons why it is important. When you ask people what is recyclable, newspaper is always one of the very first things they say.
And yet 50,000 tonnes of newsprint is thrown in Metro dumps every year. By people who think recycling newspaper is next to godliness.
So what is going on? How did I move that site from 8% to 36%?
When we started, the recycling totes were overflowing, absolutely spilling on the ground. In our focus groups several people told us they had given up on recycling because there was never room in the tote. You can easily see how this would happenyou sort and save your recycling, but when you try to take it out, there is no room. So you take it back inside and wait for next week. Next week the tote is still full, so you grumble and throw your recycling in the dumpster. If you repeat this cycle two or three times, you are going to just give up.
Now, we were trying to build a rock-solid case from our study, so we wanted to make sure we could collect good data. You can't measure recycling if the totes are overflowing, how would you show the impact of your program? This tote was 'overflowing' but after our intervention the recycling was 'cascading' onto the ground? We needed to have enough space to be able to measure change.
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART...
I visited dozens of MF sites. Whenever I calculated the volume of the recycling stream versus the volume of the garbage stream, recycling was always about 10% of the total volume. And yet Metro Vancouver hopes to divert 70% of the garbage. How are you going to fit 70 into 10? It is impossible.
If you want to increase recycling in apartment buildings, you must make sure there is enough space.
So we added totes, which filled up. We added more totes, which filled up. We added cardboard dumpstersone beside every garbage dumpster. Finally, we added Food Scraps Recycling totes (This site was in Port Coquitlam, which already had food scraps recycling for single family homes).
The people who live in apartment buildings are the same people who live in houses. They are not more apathetic. They are not more stupid. They want to do their part in society. And yet they consistently spoke of feeling like a second-class citizen. They didn't have three-stream recycling. They didn't have Food Scraps Recycling. The City didn't send them a recycling calendar. They felt less importantthey didn't even have enough recycling totes, for crying out loud.
I could see no large blip in any of my behavioural interventions. We did feedback, we did groups, we did newsletters, we did information and education. These might show no change, or a change of a few percenton the finest detailed data in North America...;-)
What did create a lot of change is giving people the infrastructure they need to do what they already wanted to do.
I visited dozens of sites for Metro's Housing Corporation. Some places didn't even have totes. Or the totes would be way across the complex, while the garbage was conveniently located near every exit.
Every garbage dumpster should have cardboard, blue bins and food scraps recycling right beside it. The system needs to support the peopleour current system is designed for diesel trucks, not human beings.
The best system I have seen is Maple Ridge, which has six or seven streams and will come empty your totes mid-week if they fill up. That is an organization that truly wants to recycle.
So....that is my first stepmake sure there is enough space for people to do what they already want to do. This would also be critical for recycling from business and industrythe workers are the same people who recycle at homebut their boss doesn't want to pay for recycling. If you want business and industrial recycling, you must require them to have recycling bins.
Going a little deeperif surveys are used to determine how to write promotional materials, do promotional materials work? In the talk linked above, I mention a German study, used by the UK government and undisputed by many academics I talked to. That study found information was only 1% of the factors influencing behaviour change. So information and education are usually useless, and especially so for recycling. People generally know that recycling is good and how to do it. Here is how I described promotional materials in one of my reports:
Direct mail studies show the success rate of direct mailbrochures--to be somewhere between 0.2% and 2%. That pretty much means any mail-out recycling brochure is a creating more paper recycling than it will ever reduce. And how about the brochure racks in municipal halls? How many people come to municipal halls? How many pick up brochures? That number is vanishingly small.
So, the assumptions behind a recycling brochure may be restated as:
This brochure is designed to only successfully reach approximately 1% of the target audience. This brochure will provide that 1% with information they did not need, and will do nothing to change the personal, social or systemic barriers they face.
Furthermore, many, many studies have shown that providing information can actually create backlash, and will distance or harden people in their positions.
Since information has so little impact, we can see the classic ladder of changeInformation, Values, Attitudes, Behaviourclearly does not work. In fact, people like Professor John Robinson at UBC and Duane Elverum at ECU/SFU do the exact oppositechange people's behaviour and you will change their values. How do you do that? You change the system they are in.
That is what I did by adding totes. I changed the system they are in.
Phew, this is now four pages long... I just want to point you towards some excellent free resources. But first I want to suggest one more Multifamily paradigm shift.
I spent a lot of time sorting Metro's garbage composition data. MF has a low diversion, alright, about 10% compared to 44% for SF. But when you look at per capita generation, it is half or less of what people in houses are producing. SF consumes two to three times more crap, which from the First R perspective, is a much larger problem.
In fact, MF is already living in the future. These are people that are sharing a gym in their building, instead of having a home gym. There may even be a theatre, or other shared facilities that are reducing their consumption. There are often socioeconomic factors at play, but many residents are in fact choosing to live in smaller space and own less crap. In bigger cities they are getting opportunities for car sharing and other services that are further reducing their impact.
So, I think a larger proportion of MF garbage is not recyclable. They are already living in a service economy to a much greater extent than people who own a house. No matter how much we yell at them, they won't be able to recycle some of these things until we change the system.
Also, when you look at the MF garbage composition, you see newspaper is very large, right after two categories of food scraps. The residents are not bringing home the newspapers. Newspapers are delivering huge stacks of newspapers to building lobbies so they can sell ads based on high circulation numbers. The second largest component og the garbage stream has nothing to do with the people who live in Multifamily.
Anyhowfree recycling resources. But first, here is how we got a 70% survey response.
We knocked on the door, and handed them a survey, and told them we would be back in one hour to pick it up. We did that for three nights, and then we left a blank survey on their door. This is a lot faster than filling it out while standing in their front hall, and we couldn't get all the phone numbers, so we couldn't do it by phone. We used this technique a few more times with great results.
Resources: Metro Vancouver has done tons of focus testing, comprehension testing, and testing with different language groupsand they are giving it all away. Much of it is available for free download at http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/solidwaste/Pages/Resources.aspx This includes entire campaign art packages, signage, icons and photographs of recyclables and compostables. This is all copyright free so you can just go get it and use it.
If you have English as Second Language speakers (or just Canadians27% can't read an aspirin bottle) contact Peter Cech at Metro Vancouver. He has a Blue Book recycling handbook that was designed to be very graphic, colour coded, and was tested across multiple language groups. The design was built to give away to anybody else who wanted it, so you can just delete the pages you don't need and print the rest. It is pretty comprehensive.
Don't use the word wastepeople don't know what it isis it a noun or a verb? Use garbage, and recycling and compost.
If you are rolling out Food Scraps Recyclingcall it Food Scraps Recycling. Metro tested Organics, Food Scraps, Kitchen Scraps, Kitchen Waste and Compost. Metro tested comprehension for all of these. People think organic means expensive food or bamboo t-shirtsorganics is an engineering term, not the term people use in their home. Kitchen Waste is bad because waste is a nebulous term. Compost is confusing with the black, lovely soil in your backyard composter. Kitchen Scraps caused confusions with tinfoil, waxed paperall the scraps you might find in your kitchen.
Food Scraps Recycling was clear to all language groups, and it piggybacks on the long-established recycling system. People know you take your recycling to the curb and it is collected. Contact Jerry Colman at Metro Vancouver and ask for the Annotated Food Scrap Brochure and all the stickers and other materials Metro developed.
All of the copyright free icons and photos are very useful for signageand the more of us using them the better. Our behaviour is largely habitual, so the easier we can make a habitual response the better. You want people to see the same image at home as at work as at school. That makes it easier for their brain to respond and reduces the chance they will default to the garbage. Standardization of images and stream colours will help us all.
I moved to Victoria, BC, so I can't send you all of this stuff myself anymore, but the folks I mentioned are super helpful. I really hope the video linked about will be useful. If you want to hear any more from me about these projects, feel free to leave your contact info. I have stacks and stacks of studies and books I can send...
Warmly,
Ruben.
Ruben Anderson
Karen,
Im finding more often than not, people will not change their behaviour based on information (Posters, newsletters, ect.) but will change behaviour to be more effective. Introducing an incentive would help create this (people think: I sort, I get rewarded, therefore sorting is an effective use of time.) I also like your Green Team Idea, as it raises awareness about recycling (people think: someone has a full time job dedicated to this, its an important issue.)
Adam Lagrou
Organic Waste Leader
Public Works
Canada
Tim, Do you have any recommended resources for survey development/best practices?
Thanks!
Karen Mason-Bennett
Program Coordinator
NEAT
Canada
Hi Deirdre
I have a couple of thoughts. Firstly, I'd be wary of assuming people are indifferent to recycling because of their survey responses. It sounds more like they are indifferent to completing surveys thoughtfully! I'd be gauging indifference to recycling by their behavior rather than survey response.
You might like to consider re-designing the survey to ask what is the MAIN reason you recycle - only one response allowed (or even a max. of 2-3 responses.) Some people will still misread it and tick all boxes, but most shouldn't.
I'd also suggest asking people why they don't recycle, to get an idea of the barriers, which may be psychological, knowledge or facilities-related.
Good luck!
Tim Cotter
Awake
Australia
www.awake.com.au
Hi Diedre,
We are in an area that is still working on developing recycling infrastructure, so with the beginning of this project, residents were provided with a small recycling bin and a tri-fold pamphlet with a detachable reference guide. In this particular town, the cost of waste hauling is included in the yearly taxes for businesses, so there's no immediate business case for recycling per se. Landlords/supers have been fairly supportive of the initiative - although we did chose the locations where there was initial support for the program too. As we move into 2013, we are going to look at the potential of developing a financial incentive based on the amount of reduced waste, but that is far from certain yet. We have done newsletters as a region and have found they have minimal impact compared to the effort that goes into creating them. I wonder if a "Green Team" approach similar to a university dorm might be effective - then the culture is being built from within? Just a thought.
Karen Mason-Bennett
Program Coordinator
NEAT
Canada
Hi Karen,
It's interesting that you are struggling with the same problem in a smaller town as we are in Hamilton. We are also trying to make face to face contact with superintendents in the hope that it will increase their level of engagement with our recycling program and we've had some very positive feedback from them but talking to tenants has been more of a struggle. We've decided to use paper surveys delivered to tenant's mailboxes or doors to try gather some responses but most of the replies tend to be from people who are already recycling while we want to capture the interest of people who aren't. Do you offer your supers and tenants any sort of incentives to encourage interest? We're also considering sending out a regular recycling newletter specifically targeting multires, do you have any experience or thoughts on that approach?
Diedre Beintema
Organic Waste Leader
City of Hamilton Public Works
Canada
Im working on the same project. This is the best solution I have been able to come up with:
Asking an open ended question (ie. why do you recycle? ________), and then categorizing their response ourselves so we can statisticly analyze the results.
However, this creates a large bias, and assumes that we will get similar results.
Does anyone have experience collecting statistics on open ended survey information?
Adam Lagrou
Organic Waste Leader
Public Works
Canada
I wonder if a simple wording change on the survey would better get at the info you want. Instead of asking "Why do you recycle; check all that apply," why not ask "How important is each of the following to you when deciding to recycle something?" using a Likert scale?
That would force people to rate each reason separately, and introduce the concept of degrees of importance. You could go so far as to remove a neutral option, although I believe there are disagreements about the accuracy of such scales.
Best,
Jess Sand
Sr. Manager, Brand & Content
Net Impact
United States
http://www.netimpact.org
Hi Diedre,
I must say I was somewhat happy to see your question as we have been struggling with a similar problem with a MRU pilot project as well. We suspect that there is a level of apathy among residents, but the economic nature of our town means that we have many shift workers that live in apartments in town during their 2-week shift and then go home to another town for their 2-weeks off. This obviously creates some problems with buy-in. We have a much smaller town so we have the opportunity to have a lot of face-time with supers and tenants which would not necessarily be applicable in Hamilton.
Karen Mason-Bennett
Program Coordinator
NEAT
Canada
...
Thanks, Ruben. The link works great! Thanks for your feedback too. Hope you have a fun and safe summer traveling.
Best,
Lisa Perschke
Recycle Program Specialist
Recycle Ann Arbor
United States
www.recycleannarbor.org