Well, I think one of the the most well-recognized
recycling policies to increase
to increase participation and diminish
refuse generation is pay-as-you-throw systems.
Those have been proven out over and over again
throughout North America to be very effective, very quickly.
Because, it is immediately apparent to the homeowner
that it's in their interest to recycle as much as possible and
reduce what they're putting out at the curb, either through recycling
or if they choose to through reduced consumption. So that,
that's a very clear winner. Another very clear winner are bottle bills
they have very high rates
of redemption and recovery
especially when you bump the deposit up to 10 cents instead of 5 cents. So those
are two really
well proven policies
I would think for which there's lots and lots of evidence.---
And when you spoke before about and the different frameworks that cities might
use
and their different goals in having a curbside recycling program,
how would those two things fit in with some of those frameworks? So,
if the city were to adopt those kinds of strategies
what framework would they be operating inside of?---
Well, they certainly would be an -
I mean Brian, correct me up if I'm wrong - but I would think that that type of
framework with certainly lead to
to the economies of scale that you need for a recycling system to be strong and
viable right. You need
the more material that you're collecting on a consistent basis,
the more robust
your whole program economics will be. So, we definitely
fit in with a paradigm in which
the economics of the recycling program,
hopefully in the long term, in longer-term, the economics of the
the residual disposal program would be optimized
Samantha makes some good points about the pay-as-you-throw, the financial incentives
and I think those are clearly good ways to go about it and somehow you need
to find a way whether it's a
volume (based) system or weight (based) system that directly goes to
the homeowner, that they can see that and realize that those are very good systems.
One of my concerns with the deposit systems which have been very effective
where they work
those places that don't have those seem to have very strong
opposition and I think we can burn a lot of
effort to make that happen in it. It may not be a low-hanging fruit even though
it's effective when it does happen
and municipalities have a lot less power to be effective.
In those, I love the idea and the concept. I think it may be very difficult (sometimes).
Some of the things I'm aware of is when you go to
a larger bin for your recyclables
such as a wheeled cart versus the small
sit-on-the-ground bin, that increases recycling rates.
Maybe it's just the ease of it, or the large capacity of it.
Those increase rates. If you are able to link your recycling day with garbage day
that's helpful. If you have recycling collection
every other week, but garbage collection every week there's some confusion there:
When is recycling day?!
Matching those up can really help recycling
rates as well. It may increase in cost but it does
improve those rates.--- Yeah we've found that the cart
and the single-stream is definitely one of the biggest factors in
increasing rates and keeping them up.---
I think nobody's mentioned it yet, but I think it's pretty obvious.
At least to me, it's obvious, you know
Mandated recycling. Making it mandatory.
It does work. There's usually - depending on the culture
in your municipality or location there could be a lot of resistance to it
but nonetheless I think it's pretty effective when there is a mandatory
program
or a mandated law in place.