CVP Communities See Participation Increase

Earlier this year, the Aluminum Can Council’s Curbside Value Partnership (CVP) partnered with counties in Florida and New Jersey to test education and operational tactics to increase residential participation in their curbside recycling programs.

Pasco County, Fla., a rural but growing community on the Gulf of Mexico, and Burlington County, N.J., a commuter town near Philadelphia, both faced declining curbside recycling participation rates. “Our task was to guide them with strategies that made sense for their needs,” Steve Thompson, CVP program director, says. “Consumers simply don’t hear about recycling enough. We make it our goal to test ways to bring the message home, literally, and it worked.”

The CVP and Burlington County began an education campaign in mid-2006, featuring several “bucket” drives with the goal of getting more buckets on the street, particularly in four target communities with lower participation rates.

“We’ve found the reason many residents do not recycle is they simply do not know how to get started,” Ann Moore, recycling coordinator for Burlington County, says. “By delivering the message and the bucket to our residents, we made it easier for them to be involved. Once they have a bucket, the habit of recycling becomes much more convenient and appealing,” she adds.

The Junior ROTC members also participated in Burlington County’s education effort, hanging informational door hangers and visiting residents in target neighborhoods to let them know how and where to start recycling.

Burlington County has recorded a 4.4 percent increase in curbside recycling participation among residents in the test markets.  Pounds recycled per household also increased by 2.3 pounds in the targeted areas, while they decreased by 1 pound in the control markets.

In Pasco County, residents are required to purchase blue bags for recycling. The CVP partnered with the county to test whether the existing blue bag program or a program using traditional 18-gallon recycling bins would be more successful in lifting curbside recycling participation rates.

The test community was divided into two areas, half of which received free blue bags and half of which received two free blue bins. Residents were asked to respond to an initial survey on the existing program and given additional materials describing the test. Newspaper, which was not previously accepted because of its curb weight, was also added in the target communities, allowing county officials to gauge whether residents would respond to the added convenience, according to the CVP.

The test found that set-out rates for the blue bag route were 12.37 percent higher then the pre-pilot benchmark, when residents were required to buy their own bags. The houses with blue bins had a set-out rate of 50.35 percent compared to figures in the same area before the pilot. The two-bin pilot route recycled 13.58 more tons of overall material compared to the blue bag pilot route, a 48 percent increase, and 13.45 more tons of newspaper, a 92 percent increase.

“It was interesting to see how much participation went up when we made curbside recycling more convenient and educated our homeowners with simple direct mail,” Rachel Surrency, Pasco County curbside recycling coordinator, says.

Surrency is planning to submit a detailed report to county officials on the success of the pilot, with the goal of helping them make an informed decision about the future of recycling in Pasco County.

More information about the CVP is available at www.RecycleCurbside.org.