are renters and apartment dwellers, meaning that communities may be missing a key opportunity to get residents recycling correctly when they first start living on their own. Automatic or Opt-In Another focus of the study was to understand how easily recycling programs are provided to residents. Psychological research has found many behaviors are subject to an “inertia effect,” where people will stick with whatever is offered to them as the default option. This prompted the study organizers to consider whether recycling programs are held back by requiring residents to sign up or pay an additional fee to participate. The research team observed a range of opt-in systems used in recycling programs. Most curbside recycling programs are offered automatically, meaning that residents receive a recycling cart or bin as part of the overall trash collection system. Other communities offer recycling as an optional free service and residents must call to sign up, pick up a bin or register to have a bin delivered. Still other programs require a one-time fee to obtain a bin or cart, which may be the full or discounted cost of the container. Finally, programs may charge a monthly or quarterly fee—on top of that charged for trash collection—to receive recycling services. The study found these opt-in systems serve about one in ten residents who receive curbside recycling through their community, or 6% of the total U.S. population. Over twice as many residents (14%) have curbside recycling available to them via subscription, meaning they must individually contract with a waste hauler for service. The research team found that subscription programs also varied widely in their recycling service offerings. In some areas, it is common, or even required by law, for recycling to be offered as a “free” service for all paying trash customers and it is bundled in with the monthly trash collection rate. In other regions, curbside recycling is priced separately in addition to trash service. Still in other areas, curbside recycling was only available from specialized haulers, rather than the same ones offering general trash collection. While the study did not capture metrics on the prevalence of these different pricing models from the thousands of trash haulers operating in subscription areas of the U.S., it’s worth noting that a variety of systems exist under the umbrella of “subscription recycling.” These details about subscription recycling are worthy of future research. Curbside recycling service types Two major changes in curbside recycling in the past 15 years or so have been the widespread adoption of rolling carts for collection and the transition from dual- to single-stream collection. The study found that single-stream collection is now in place for almost 90% of residents in single family-based 20 Spray September 2016
Spray September 2016
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