Coppell’s recycling strategy begins to bear regurgitated fruit

by PegNews wire

As reported, the City of Coppell decided at the beginning of 2009 to outfit single family households with bigger recycling bins than the ones they'd been having homeowners use, in the hopes of increasing the amount of material recycled.

At the same time, they instituted an awareness campaign designed to attack the waste issue from the other angle: that of increased populace participation. (The campaign - dubbed "Make Your Cart Count" - targets school kids and includes the distribution of (recyclable, one presumes) Coppell Recycles stickers, which are designed to be affixed (i.e., stuck) on the big blue recycling bins. (Just to remind folks what they're for, one supposes.)

Anyhow, it turns out that giving people bigger bins to put stuff in actually does seem to affect how much they put in them: the percentage of trash bound for the landfill that's been diverted to recycling has gone up from 11% in 2008 to 15% thusfar in 2009.

And the number of households participating in the program has gone up from 36% in 2008 (the era of smaller bins and less-recycling-conscious consumers) to 61% in the present, more enlightened, bigger bin epoch.

Not bad, Coppell!

posted by JM