THIS TOOLKIT IS PROVIDED BY RECYCLE, MICHIGAN—AN EDUCATION AND OUTREACH INITIATIVE OF THE MICHIGAN RECYCLING COALITION
BUILDING A RECYCLING BEHAVIOR CHANGE STRATEGY
Topic Overview
This guide provides some best practices to help you reach residents with helpful messaging. This guide will support strategy and priority setting for short and long-term goals using a four-stage planning framework:
- Research should identify gaps or opportunities and target audience(s), establish baseline data, clarify the desired behavior change, and point to available resources.
- Planning begins with establishing benchmarks for existing activities and setting goals and metrics based on the research and resources identified.
- Implementation depends on the results of research and planning. Results of the previous steps will guide actions needed to meet goals.
- Evaluation is essential to measuring and modifying future strategies.
Ongoing education, coupled with expert knowledge of recycling procedures will increase quality participation in recycling programs. Progress should be measured using simple metrics to assess success.
RESEARCH
Know Your Program
Perform assessments of participation, recycling rates, and potential contamination
Understanding behaviors around participation in residential curbside programs is required to deliver a successful recycling education campaign.
Consider performing a successful recycling participation study using a representative community sample or targeting areas with low participation. A simple survey or feedback from recycling drivers can help uncover target areas of low participation or high contamination.
Vocabulary Check
Set-out rate is the number of times a curbside customer places their cart/bin at the curb. Watch this video to learn more about set-out rate (you'll stay on this page).
Partnerships with neighboring cities and counties that have conducted set-out rate research can give insights into participation behaviors of residents in the region.
Online survey tools can be used to gauge public interest and needs in areas of low participation.
Check program website analytics for baseline website usage for your recycling page (i.e. what are residents clicking on and how long are they staying on the page).
Make note of popular search terms within web analytics for solid waste, recycling, hazardous materials, commercial, construction debris, etc.
Use the analytical data metrics to inform and redesign the current webpage layout, adding commonly searched items to the landing page and using terms that residents/businesses understand.
Conduct incentivized, brief website surveys to discover the effectiveness of the recycling/solid waste page before redesigning.
Know Your Program
Build Relationships with Partners
The receiving material recovery facility is a key partner to successful recycling. It's important to know exactly what materials the facility is collecting and marketing because that is the foundation of your educational materials. The facility can also provide important information about contamination levels and typical mistakes.
Conduct informal interviews or workshops with haulers/drivers to discover common household recycling habits, cart/container placement, contamination, and high/low participation neighborhoods/areas.
If your organization has communications staff, work with them to determine current in-house communications resources - video, radio, press, advertising, social media, survey tools, and others to discover gaps, resources, and level of knowledge before launching a communications campaign.
Communications needs could be assessed by informal internal/external interviews with:
Supervisors
Customer Service Staff
inside your department & others inside the organization
Resident interviews
Know Your Program
Findings from interviews should answer the following questions:
What are people calling and asking about?
Have they been to the website? Are they finding needed information?
Have they been able to quickly find the information they need from the website or social media?
What are the topics that have caused common confusion?
What level of understanding do residents have or want about recycling?
What do residents think about recycling services? Look for common themes.
What media vehicles work best to reach your target residents?
Can you quantify the number of incoming resident calls received before, during, and after a campaign to determine effectiveness?
Know Your Program
Understand Your Audience
There is no "general public" - each resident or customer understands recycling and waste diversion based on their own life experiences. Research the demographics of your area to understand socioeconomic barriers that may be preventing behavior change due to linguistic isolation or other factors and explore the availability and accessibility of resources to enact behavior change and any geographical/social barriers to resources.
Knowing your audience will help establish a need for translation or transcreation of educational materials as a baseline. Transcreation is when you create educational resources with relevant languages and cultural references whether that is the food packaging type you use for recycling photos or how you set up your strategy to intentionally reach underserved communities.
This can also aid in developing a targeted strategy to reach specific audience(s) and create lasting behavior change. This approach also helps with inclusivity by welcoming all residents to participate in the desired behavior. Educational materials should also visually represent the individuals who live in your service area.
PLANNING
Planning
Use your research to set goals for a residential outreach campaign. Consider metrics that you can quantify. Start with your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? Are they from a specific neighborhood or representative of socioeconomic or cultural demographics?
Sample Goal
DECREASE CONTAMINATION
Set one overarching goal with two to three objectives. These will become the basis for planning, tactics, and implementation activities. This strategy makes outreach more effective and focused.
Sample Objectives
SMART OBJECTIVES
Your objectives should be SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time-Based
See examples below
Marketing Collateral
ESSENTIAL COMMUNICATIONS
If your research shows that residents are highly motivated by ease of recycling, the theme could focus on simplicity of participation. If research shows confusion about materials that are not accepted, the theme could focus on avoiding unwanted items. Make the theme fit the need!
Examples of measurable objectives:
- Decrease recycling contamination by 🆇% by 20🆇🆇
- Increase residential recycling by 🆇% and continue to increase 🆇% over the next 🆇 year
- 200 residents participate in [insert top unwanted item] campaign by signing an online pledge
- Increase participation in low-participation neighborhood as determined by the set-out rate, recycling study, or pre- and post-campaign observations
- Increase awareness of recycling program(s) as measured in pre- and post-campaign qualitative interviews
- Increase in website traffic by 🆇% regarding recycling or composting year over year
- Increase in social media engagement for waste reduction and recycling-related posts by more than 🆇 reaches per post
Data:
Use qualitative data about recycling behavior and common themes to create baseline objectives - i.e. if you have baseline survey or recycling contamination data to start, set an estimated percent or number change from the baseline.
Outreach tactics should focus on reaching the outlined objectives. This may include creating a foundation for a rebranding campaign, new marketing materials, and a website redesign with regular social media updates directing residents to the new website.
Planning
Marketing Collateral
Your research on behavior change strategies and your residents' motivation for change should be reflected in your promotional materials and how you distribute them. For example, if residents are highly motivated by the ease of recycling, then the theme could focus on the simplicity of participation. However, if your research shows residents are confused about non-accepted materials, the theme could focus on avoiding unwanted items in recycling.
Your collateral distribution plan may include:
- Residential direct mail campaign
- Media and social outreach surrounding common confusion topics from research
- Event participation with education tables
- Contests, pledges, or commitments to improve engagement
- Communications calendar for planning and tracking social media posts, press releases, media advisories, website and social video, blogs and articles, and events.
- Targeted outreach in specific areas of low participation or high contamination (e.g. county parks, recreation centers, event venues).
- Online advertisements (e.g. organization-managed social media, community websites)
- Outdoor/venue signage
- Cart tags for neighborhood campaign
- Other ideas
When creating recycling education materials, keep it simple. With printed materials, use simple links or QR codes to where residents can find more information. Narrow your marketing materials to the collateral that will best reach your audience.
Planning
Website
A city, county, or recycling hauler's website is often the most relied upon source for recycling information and should serve as the home base for messaging. Messaging and information should be aligned across all sites in a community. The information should also be clear and easy to navigate, with up-to-date recycling and contact information.
Website Basics:
- Recycling-specific webpage
- What is accepted for recycling and what is not accepted, with clear photos
- Route schedules or calendars
- Special instructions about collection (cart distance, items outside of the recycling containers)
- Educational information and videos about what is happening with recyclables in processing and end markets.
- Website recycling apps like RecycleCoach or ReCollect can assist web users in searching for recycling information by material type. This is especially helpful for materials not collected at the curb.
- Assess website quarterly or biannually at a minimum.
- Studying analytics around education and outreach campaigns will help determine the effectiveness of driving web traffic to a campaign.
IMPLEMENTATION
Implementation
This is where your goals and measurable objectives identified in the planning stage come alive.
Participate in community events to distribute material and drive traffic to the website
Follow a monthly communications calendar for planning and tracking social media posts, press releases, media advisories, website and social video, blogs and articles, and events.
Create and implement standard operating procedures for event tabling, displays, and volunteer protocol.
Create a Green Team with recycling and waste reduction volunteer ambassadors to participate in events, spread messages, and participate in street clean-ups.
Direct mail campaigns in targeted low-participation areas.
EVALUATION
Evaluation
Return to your objective measures and analyze where you were successful and where adjustments are needed to achieve success.
Compare post-campaign residential recycling tons collected against identified goals.
Measure post-campaign numbers against baseline curbside assessment of participation rates by area. Conduct an informal study to see if participation increased.
Conduct post-campaign interviews or survey recycling drivers to assess improvements in target areas of low participation or potential contamination.
Check current website analytics against baseline metrics on website usage for recycling information.
Review the current number of volunteers engaged compared with volunteer goals.
Tally the number of events and engagement results (e.g. emails collected, volunteers recruited, etc).
Residential communications campaigns should be rejuvenated every 2-3 years using this same strategic process.