The Recycling Partnership publishes 2023 Knowledge Report

The Recycling Partnership (TRP), a Washington-based nongovernmental organization focused on improving recycling systems, has released its 2023 Knowledge Report. The report is a summary of research done by TRP’s Center for Sustainable Behavior & Impact, which was founded early 2022.  

Louise Bruce, managing director of the center, explains that TRP measures the impact of increasing local recycling opportunities and has found that even in households with access to recycling, approximately 50 percent of recyclables don’t make it to curbside bins. Bruce emphasizes that this amounts to 15 million tons of recyclables currently going to landfills. To address this issue, TRP founded the Center for Sustainable Behavior & Impact to understand the recycling barriers people experience.  

“We know that we're under capturing what could be captured by existing systems,” Bruce says. “There's been great work going on across the country, exploring how do we educate residents, how do we engage them? What we wanted to do is create a space where we could study that and really measure the impact of a variety of interventions, so that we can then turn around and get that information out to communities, so they know if I deploy this message, or if I deploy this tool, I can expect this much of an increase in participation.” 

Research methods 

Through several kinds of research, including field tests in communities around the country, the center has identified four recycling system features that change behavior: a systematic communications infrastructure that includes data-based touch points for the entire life cycle of a product and regular updates from recyclers; confidence in recycling as a system that works; engagement and outreach tailored to specific audiences; and systems that meet people where they are in their recycling behaviors by providing in-home solutions. Communication is key to developing these features, and TRP’s Paying it Forward report says once people have access to recycling, investments of $1.2 billion toward education and outreach are required to effectively improve recycling behavior.

Bruce says the center’s research process starts with a series of surveys, including audience segmentation, ethnography, racial equity and diversity and inclusion as it relates to recycling habits. The center also created a Recycling Confidence Index through a quantitative online survey to establish a baseline level of confidence it can track in the coming years. The center says it reached more than 10,000 people over the course of the initial research phase, and these findings then informed qualitative conversations with people in focus groups. Brown says the center used information from the qualitative and quantitative phases to develop intervention strategies, from targeted messaging to home bins, that were deployed to approximately 52,000 homes. Field tests were conducted with the support of local organizations in eight communities around the country, including Reynoldsburg, Ohio, and Hammonton, New Jersey. 

Approaching communities 

Community field tests deployed motivational messaging strategies and measured their impact by monitoring bins. In choosing a community to work with in Ohio, the center approached TRP’s long-time partner, the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO), which works with several local recycling groups.   

“[The Recyling Partnership] approached us, indicating they wanted to do essentially some field testing of new educational materials, and it aligned very well with us,” says Andrew Booker, program manager at SWACO. “We have very close relationships with our local communities. We support them in a variety of ways when it comes to recycling. Our focus traditionally has been so much on anti-contamination that we were also in the process of trying to figure out what we would call more motivational messaging. We've been working on motivational messaging to try to get those people that are less frequent recyclers or maybe nonrecyclers to start recycling or to recycle more, so, it was the next evolution in our thinking as well.” 

SWACO identified Reynoldsburg as the ideal site for a field test because of its existing educational and cart-based recycling program. The city previously received $12,488 in grant funding from SWACO to fund recycling efforts at Reynoldsburg City Hall and Senior Center. SWACO connected the center with the city’s private recycling hauler, helped gather data on participation and curbside recycling volumes and worked with the parks and recreation department to execute the program in city parks. The center designed and deployed three styles of messaging: empathetic, emotional and logical. In Reynoldsburg, it found that carts tagged with empathetic messages showed a 38 percent increase in average route tonnage after the interventions.  

Booker says the organization is considering how to use some of the center’s findings in its recycling networks.  

“We're very much digesting those kinds of concepts as we look to evolve our education messages,” he says. “Coincidentally, we are in the process of developing the newest iteration of our Recycle Right campaign, which is our public education campaign. We did some focus groups ourselves with some new messaging that we're testing. Akin to what The Recycling Partnership does … we're really probing and trying to understand how best to reach people where they are when it comes to recycling.” 

Field testing in Hammonton was conducted by the Atlantic Counties Utilities Authority (ACUA), which provides local utilities for 24 towns in the region. Hammonton already has a cart recycling program, and ACUA Chief Customer Relationship Manager Sara Verrillo says it has a good participation rate compared with other towns in the ACUA coverage area. Hammonton made the switch to carts more than 10 years ago, and Verrillo says its participation rates have improved significantly since then. Given these factors, Verrillo says the center’s goal with the messaging program was to understand if targeted communications would further improve participation. However, the center found no statistically significant increase in recycling participation rates after the field test.

“It was a little disappointing from the work that went into it to the outcome because there was no real impact on participation through the program [The Recycling Partnership] did,” Verrillo says. “But one of the positive takeaways was that people were willing to answer their doors and speak with people about recycling. Also, the percentage of people who had reported that recycling was important to them was high.” 

While the center’s field test was focused on measuring participation, Verrillo says she hopes a future program will work on reducing contamination.  

What’s next? 

Having documented its first year of work in the Knowledge Report, Bruce says the center has started thinking about its next steps. Though she doesn’t indicate plans for contamination-specific field tests, Bruce says the four features of a behavior-changing recycling system and extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation are key motivators in the center’s future.  

“With EPR in mind, we're designing an activation in California,” Bruce says. “We'll be doing some research on the ground where we're looking at the layer cake, if you will, of communications that are necessary to achieve the rates of recycling of covered materials under California SB 54. We're just trying to see how we can work to really complement the incredible work that's happening on the ground with further evidence around what residents need. 

“We've explored behaviors around curbside collection, and we'll continue to do so, but we're also interested in what motivates participation in drop-off programs. So, we're doing some looks inside the home at what drives those behaviors. Then we'll be looking at people's experience of specific materials. So, for example, containers that touch food—there's just so many questions like, ‘How clean is clean?’ Then of course, looking at the impact of tools like Recycle Check and considering where else can we provide real-time updates that can easily be changed to reflect changes in their geography, so if they go to work and the requirements are different, how can we make sure that they're getting easy access to the localized information in real time.”