Recycling: Hero or Villain? The Public Is Confused

Nancy Roberts

Environmental specialists are working, like everyone else, in a polarized world where distrust of media and “truthiness” can make us question absolutely everything.

You’ve seen the headlines in everything from business press, public radio …

“Recycling Doesn’t Work”

“Plastic Recycling Doesn’t Work and Will Never Work”

“You Can’t Recycle Your Way Out”

“America’s Broken Recycling System”

… and network TV:

At Gigantic, we work with clients whose jurisdictions:

  • Don’t accept “compostable” plastic
  • Do accept “compostable” plastic
  • Only accept Plastics # 1, 2, 5
  • Only accept “rigid” plastics
  • Ask you to put plastic bags in the Garbage
  • Ask you to put plastic bags in the Recycling
  • Accept paper cups in Recycling
  • Accept paper cups in the Garbage
  • Put pizza boxes in the Recycling
  • Put pizza boxes in the Organics

And on and on…

We can't recycle our way out of the plastic crisis - Insta post from Story of Stuff
Source: Story of Stuff Instagram

Is it any wonder that residents are wondering what’s going on?

If we had a magic wand, we’d wave it and make all this a lot simpler: focus on just a few of the most easily identified recyclable materials so that “waste” streams are clean and easily processed. We’d like to see:

  • All jurisdictions’ carts be the same color and labels as in other jurisdictions.
  • Every jurisdiction have the same “what goes where” instructions and
  • VASTLY simplify “what goes where” messaging to focus on the most recyclable items, in order to cut down on contamination. We have seen over and over that “wishcycling” is a real thing, and a real hassle for materials facilities.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. For now, environmental communicators need to be honest about the challenges of recycling, while reassuring the public that many problems can be solved and not to give up hope.

Garden Pots and Mulch Bags, OH MY!

Kas Neteler

On a recent chilly early Monday morning in March, Stef and I were conducting spot checks* for our client, Livermore Recycles. In a single lid-flipping morning, we walk several miles and record data on approximately 200 residential trash/recycling/composting set-outs. I flip the lid on each cart and call out what I see while Stef records the data on her clipboard.

On this morning, a pattern was beginning to emerge. From the compost cart we could tell folks were definitely working on their gardens and yards this time of year AND some of them were confused about where their nursery pots and mulch bags should end up. Unfortunately, film plastics such as mulch bags and those black flimsy pots belong in the trash – we found several set-outs where these items were contaminating the organics cart and the recycling cart.

flower pots wrongly placed in recycling and organics carts

As a result of seeing this in the field on Monday, and verifying with the team that this continued throughout the week, we were able to create a social media post prior to the next weekend to let Livermore residents know:

FB post about trashing mulch bags and pots

We were quite pleased when we saw the comments and likes come in:

positive comments on the post

I’d call that a Gigantic success and a good example of how we can act upon what we see is needed in a short amount of time.

*Gigantic Idea Studio, has been flipping lids in Livermore twice a year (Spring and Fall since 2017. This involves early morning starts to stay ahead of the Livermore Sanitation trucks as we flip lids on approximately 1,000 setouts during a single week. The data is collected, reviewed and reported back to the client, along with recommendations for messaging specific to Livermore residents’ needs.