2005-07-26_PWETC_AgendaPacket - Laserfiche WebLink

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Scenario E: Increased education Education Collection Schedule Bi-Weekly Recycling Containers One 18-gallon bin Number of Households 344 Participation Rate 86.3% 1 Avg. Lbs Collected per HH per Route 25.3 2 Environmental 1.9 Most Important Component Resident Satisfaction NA ....... Willing to Pay More NA , Derived from Appendix H Table 3 net average PQundsperhousehold ..... 20n a scale of 1 - 4 with 1 being the most imllbrtant out rate at 72.2%. Residents in this area were mailed the new educational materials in Appendix A. This scenario tested the effect the educational material alone would have on resident behavior. Participants remained on the every other week collection cycle. When asked in the pre-survey what would motivate them to recycle more residents in this .area overwhelmingly picked a firiancialrebate. More than 42% of these residents picked the rebate while 25% picked the second most popular option of weekly collection. Residents in this area were fifth in participation rate in the "before" period at 79.5%. They had the second highest increase in participants at 6.8%. But they remained in fifth at 86.3%. Residents in this area also were fifth in set but rate in the "before" period at 67.7%. They increased 4.5% in the "during" period but remained the second lowest set Participants incre<ised the a.mo1Jl1tOf recysling put out for collection per person. The mean pounds per household colle.cted went from 21.73 in the "be.fore" period to 25.30 in the "during" period. The education pieces were well regarged. There were two strong themes that came through in the post- survey: residents found the magnets ha.ndy and easy to use, and residents learned the message of only recycling plastic bottles with.a neck. That appears to be borne out in the composition sort. The "other trash" category that included unwaritedtyjJes of plastic dropped from 2.1 % of the sample in the before period to 1.3% in both of the "during" period sorts. Overall the "other trash" in all the two-stream samples stayed roughly the same in all three sorts. One respondent noted that he/she put out less recycling after excluding the unwanted types of plastic. This area did have a block that was not single-family homes. There were 21 rental towrihomes in a corner of the test area. Rental properties tend to have lower participation rates in part because of the transient nature of these residents (for more on this see the section Observations on Lower Participating Areas). These residents were almost equally divided into the diligent recycler, infrequent recycler and non-recycler categories. Resident behavior did not change after the educational material was mailed to them. 32