Can I Recycle This? Beth Coddington, Consultant, Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) New research on U.S. recycling programs explores availability, materials, services and consumer willingness While recycling programs may seem ubiquitous these days, by most measures less than a third of waste in the U.S. actually gets recycled. Tackling the challenge of increasing U.S. recycling rates therefore raises the need to truly understand what and how U.S. consumers can recycle and identify any hidden barriers to improving recycling systems. The recently released 2015-16 Centralized Study on Availability of Recycling, commissioned by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), looked to uncover these issues by assessing not only the availability of recycling programs in general, but also the types of programs provided to consumers and the ways in which they access them. Two years in the making, the study involved the collaboration of over a dozen industry, government and not-for-profit stakeholders to measure the availability of recycling programs, both in general and for over 40 individual materials and package types. The research design included a comprehensive census of the largest communities in each state, ensuring that over half of every state’s population was covered with direct methods, with no extrapolation or assumptions. Smaller communities in the U.S. were covered via extrapolation from a random sample with representation from each state and a selection of urban, rural and suburban community types. Availability of recycling In line with previous research on this topic, the study found that 94% of U.S. consumers have a recycling program. However, the study took new approaches to evaluating the quality and convenience of these recycling programs. Based on these methods, the study found that 73% of U.S. consumers have curbside recycling programs available; this is somewhat lower than previous research had estimated. Another 21% of the population is estimated to have only drop-off recycling programs available. Multi-family recycling One particular focus of the study was on services available to residents of apartments and other multi-family housing. Over the course of the study, it was found that curbside recycling programs offered by cities and towns are usually only available to residents of single-family homes and small multi-family buildings, like duplexes. However, 13% of the U.S. population, and over one-third of all renters, live in larger apartment buildings (five or more units). How do these residents recycle? In some cases, cities provide recycling carts or dumpsters to apartments, but it is more commonly left to the property owner to provide these services—or not. In fact, cities providing a consistent recycling program to all single- and multi- family housing comprise only 20% of the U.S. population. The lack of consistent services for all residents is one barrier to getting more waste recycled. Without curbside recycling at their apartment complex, apartment dwellers may recycle only when they have time to haul their recyclables to a drop-off location—surely an inconvenient prospect, especially compared to throwing everything in the trash dumpster in the parking lot. Beyond the physical barriers, lack of multi-family recycling dilutes the audience that cities or partner advertisers can reach. It means residents have to be re-educated on how and what to recycle as they move between homes and apartments. This could have a long-term impact: more of the younger generation September 2016 Spray 19
Spray September 2016
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