Story at a glance
- A new report from The Recycling Partnership found that most Americans believe recycling is positive.
- But the report also found that half of all household recyclable materials in the country end up in the trash.
- This is partially due to people’s confusion about what can be recycled and mistrust in what is actually happening to the items they do put in the recycling bin.
Raz Lev, 41, takes his recycling seriously. He and his family regularly fill up the two recycling bins that sit by the back door of their Mountain View, Calif., home with cardboard boxes, plastic milk jugs, water bottles, aluminum cans and paper.
The family also routinely drives to the supermarket to recycle bundles of plastic grocery bags and will trek out to the city’s recycling center, about a 15-minute drive from home, to drop off old electronics.
“Sometimes we cut corners, like the kids will throw a toilet paper roll in the trash and not in the recycling,” Lev said.
He added that his family also “slacks off” by not doing a better job of separating plastics. “We put some stuff in the cart that the city doesn’t want,” he said. “But I just don’t understand what they want and what they don’t want.”
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Lev is not the only American who is confused about his city’s recycling guidelines. And that confusion plays a huge role in which recyclables make it into the right bin.
A new report from The Recycling Partnership, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that works to advance recycling programs, found that about half of all household recyclable material is thrown out in regular trash bins.
That means that around 15 million tons of recyclable material winds up in landfills every year, according to the report.
The report’s crafters observed the at-home recycling habits of 16 different homes, conducted over 100 interviews, surveyed over 10,000 people and conducted 7 community recycling pilot programs for the study.
Drawing on that research, the report identified two main reasons why Americans are not recycling as much as they could be.
A lack of knowledge and lack of confidence
Most Americans rely on product labels to figure out what can and cannot be recycled. Many people are also confused by those same labels.
According to the report, 78 percent of people look to product labels for recycling information and 70 percent admit to being confused by many of them.
In addition, the report also found that 75 percent of Americans who live in communities with recycling programs do not recall getting any kind of communication from their local program.
It isn’t quite clear why some communities have better communication with their local recycling programs than others.
“Perhaps their community is not resourced to provide communications around the recycling program, or it could be because we haven’t designed those communications to really be recognizable,” said Louise Bruce, managing director of the Center for Sustainable Behavior & Impact at The Recycling Partnership.
Some of the recycling rules that most commonly cause confusion have to do with what can actually be recycled.
When asked if different materials should go in recycling bins, 46 percent of people said “yes” for Styrofoam and 31 percent said “yes” for food waste, according to the report.
Neither Styrofoam nor food waste should be placed in an outdoor or commercial recycling cart. This is because Styrofoam is not recyclable and the grease and oils from food waste can harm recycling machinery, potentially ruining complete batches of recyclables.
Thirty percent of people also admitted to being confused about just how clean something needs to be in order to be recycled and what should be done with items that are made up of multiple materials, the report adds.
“At that moment when you are standing above the recycling bin, I think we are asking people to answer quite a lot of questions,” said Bruce. “That results sometimes in feelings of anxiety, feelings of confusion that might prevent them from recycling that material correctly.”
The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that recycling is good. One survey included in the report found that 8 out of 10 people living in the U.S. think that recycling has a “positive impact” and is a “valuable public service.”
But confidence in the recycling process is declining. Even a large portion of what the report calls “committed recyclers” don’t fully trust their local recycling program, with 44 percent of that group admitting they are unsure if their recycling is not just going in the trash.
Another 35 percent of committed recyclers admitted to wondering if their local recycling program is “handling recycling properly.”
How recycling habits could be improved
The report suggests these problems can be fixed, however. It poses some possible solutions that could bridge the recycling “behavior gap.”
Among them: better communication between recycling providers and customers.
People would feel more confident in their recycling program and their ability to recycle properly if they received recycling info cards, stickers or signs with visual information on what can and can’t be recycled, according to the report.
Another solution suggested by the report is simplifying the recycling process. A third of people asked for more, larger or better recycling collection when asked by researchers from the Recycling Partnership about what their local recycling program could do to better help them, according to the report.
Another 58 percent of people said they do not have everything they need to recycle well, describing their collection as too small to handle all of their recyclables.
“If it’s hard, then only people who are super motivated will do it,” said Lev. “But if it’s easy, then almost everyone will do it.”
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