Today was recycling day in my neighborhood. On my way to work I noticed only a handful of people were recycling. Why?
Did they forget today was recycling? Could be.
Don’t they believe recycling is important? What! Do they live under a rock?
Or, are they just that ignorant about how recycling is necessary in today’s world?
Whatever the reason, we can all do more to recycle. Local governments, trash collectors and neighborhood associations can easily do more to increase recycling rates. Through better education programs, incentives to recycle, and making it fun and easy, we could see a tremendous increase in recycling.
This got me to thinking, what motivated me to recycle? I felt it was the right thing to do. It was easy and took very little extra effort. Although I admit I can still recycle more.
What has been done to increase recycling in other communities? Are there some innovative programs out there that made others recycle more?
After a bit of poking around the internet I found a couple that really caught my attention.
RecycleMania – This is a friendly recycling program pitting colleges and universities against each other to see who can recycle the most. During the 10-week competition schools report their recycling and trash data which are then ranked into the following categories: the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, and the highest recycling rates.
The RecycleMORE Community Tonnage Competition – This is a 12-week competition in Baltimore where area neighborhoods compete to see what neighborhood can recycle more. The recycling company weighs the amount of recyclable material from each neighborhood and the neighborhood with the highest weight of recycling wins. The winning neighborhood receives a free block party.
These were just a few of the hundreds of fun ways to get people to recycle more. What are some the programs you have seen or done? Just telling people to recycle because it’s good for the environment does not work. Communities need to do more education, emphasizing the benefits, taking down the barriers and provide people with fun prompts to remind them of the importance of recycling. Some communities are already doing these things. For the government agencies and trash collection companies that aren’t… Come on! This isn’t rocket science. You don’t have to recreate the wheel. Look around at what other communities are doing and implement a fun and educational way to increase recycling.
