The impact of transient populations on recycling behaviour in a densely populated urban environment

This research paper explores the role of transience in kerbside recycling performance in Portsmouth, a Southern English city and one of the most densely populated in Europe. Recycling in an urban environment is difficult; UK authorities failing to meet their recycling targets are predominantly cities where medium and high density housing causes problems for collections that rely on householder segregation of waste. Since urban areas are likely to become more densely populated, the waste management issues arising in Portsmouth may be illustrative of those likely to be faced by authorities with high rates of population flux and high population densities in future, especially university towns and cities. A recycling participation survey of 62,299 households was carried out in June-July 2005 and repeated in June-July 2007. Householder participation in the kerbside scheme was recorded over three consecutive collections (6 weeks). There was very little change in overall participation between the two surveys, with 78.4% of households participating in recycling in 2005 and 78.2% in 2007. Although this shows recycling to be the “normal” activity, conducted by most households in both surveys, 10% of households were found to be “new recyclers” and 10% seemed to stop recycling (i.e. they were found to be recycling in 2005 but not in 2007), with the more densely populated areas being “hot spots” of change. As a consequence, three months after the 2007 participation survey, approximately 1,300 “stopped recycling” households were surveyed by a team of doorsteppers to discuss why they apparently stopped recycling during the survey period. A key issue was population transience, which was found to be greater in urban areas. It seems that once the recycling habit is established it is very difficult to break. Changes in “physical” circumstances were the drivers behind those properties that stopped recycling: a change of address, a change in occupants, a bin going missing. A four-group recycling behaviour typology (sustained recycler, non-recycler, stopped recycler, and new recycler) emerges, which will be useful for many urban waste authorities in monitoring and analysing their own recycling performance. It is clear from this study that policies to concentrate population and to increase recycling rates in urban areas could potentially conflict. Actions for increasing recycling rates appropriate for authorities with high rates of population flux and high population densities are suggested, including targeted and carefully timed communications campaigns, especially for university students, and guidelines for new build properties

Public participation and recycling performance in England: a comparison of tools for behaviour change

Improving the quality and capture of materials collected for recycling is at the top of the waste agenda for many English local authorities. In recent years, the focus has shifted away from general awareness raising techniques in favour of methods that can bring about behaviour change. This paper reports on three projects each using a different behaviour change based approach, which all aimed to increase participation in the recycling collection scheme and to reduce inclusion of non-targeted materials (“contamination”). The three projects—one doorstepping-based, one incentives-based and one delivering personalised feedback to residents were carried out in Portsmouth between 2005 and 2006 during a period where there were no major changes to the collection infrastructure. The findings show that personalised incentives and feedback were highly effective at reducing contamination. Both methods resulted in a halving of the number of households setting out contaminants on collection day. The feedback approachwas considerably more cost-effective than the other two approaches, costing £0.50 per household to implement the campaign and averaging £3.00 for every household which subsequently displayed behaviour change. There was little improvement in the quality of collected materials attributed to doorstepping alone. None of the projects resulted in significant changes in recycling scheme participation; however, this may be because participation was initially high. These findings suggest that behaviour change is most effectively brought about using simple, low-cost methods to engage with residents at the point of service delivery, i.e. by the collection crews whilst emptying bins. The challenge now is to integrate this into service delivery as standard