A coordinated and comprehensive education strategy is the backbone of a successful recycling program. There is a knowing-doing gap, and it is time to design an education program to help residents recycle right.
Step 1: Identify and understand your primary issue
Before designing an education strategy, it is essential to know the most expensive and urgent problem to solve. Through municipality-wide recycling cart audits, data can be captured to discover the makeup of recycling contaminants.
Step 2: Design your education and enforcement strategies
To help residents form sustained recycling behaviors, a staged enforcement and education program must be developed. Depending on the level of contamination, different actions should be taken.
Step 3: Implementation
While implementing a staged education program, household recycling behavior needs to continuously be tracked to monitor changes. We recommend constantly assessing the effectiveness of a program by measuring household recycling behavior and making changes as needed.
Step 4: Evaluation and redesign
The goal should be to help residents form sustained recycling behaviors that continue after the initial recycling campaign. Therefore, an education strategy needs to continue tracking household recycling behavior and evaluate the lifetime value of the program.
Summary
The only way to design a successful recycling education program is through careful tests and the collection of real-time data. The best way to accomplish this is by building a four-step process, identify, design, implement, and evaluate. Follow these steps to successfully implement an effective recycling education program.
