How the proper bin design and effective planning lead to improved recycling success.
Recycling can get pretty complicated at times, but successful recycling is based on two fairly straightforward concepts:
• Getting as many people as possible to put the right stuff in the right bin as often as possible.
• Getting that stuff picked up and transported to the proper manufacturing facility as efficiently as possible.
Sounds simple right? Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that can make that a lot harder than it sounds. But with effective planning and the right bins, you can maximize the effectiveness of your recycling program and overcome most of the obstacles that would otherwise inhibit your program.
There are some basic principles that are critical to successful operations. The degree to which you can implement these principles will go a long way toward making your program a success.
You have to be able to find the bins. You’d be amazed how easy it is to miss this step. That is why aesthetics can be so critical. If your recycling bins don’t meet the aesthetic expectations of a space, they are likely to be relegated to areas that are hard to find and hard to see. If you can’t find a bin, you can’t use a bin. Investing in bins that meet or exceed the aesthetic helps to ensure that they are placed in areas where they get noticed and therefore get used.
Have parallel access between the recycling and the trash. Parallel access means having trash and recycling bins co-located together but visibly different than each other. I can’t stress enough how important this is. If someone only sees a trash bin, too often many people will throw recyclables into the trash. Conversely, if someone sees only a recycling bin, often times people will throw trash into the recycling bin. This contaminates the may result in its recyclable content being discarded as trash. When you have parallel bins together, it only takes someone a fraction of a second to participate in the program. This increases the likelihood that more people will recycle more often.
Get restrictive lids. In all the years and for all the programs that I have been managing recycling, restrictive lids have proven to be the single most effective tool to ensure that the right material ends up in the right bin. The concept is similar to the children’s shape sorting game in which they discover that they can’t put the square peg through the round hole. With restrictive lids, you can’t put a round can through a paper slot (well technically you can, but you really have to work at it and the only way you are going to get that cross-contamination in your bins is if someone is deliberately contaminating your bin, which very rarely happens). Does a language barrier affect some of your staff from easily understanding signs and labels? Restrictive lids still work.
How will you empty your bins? Remember that anything you put into your recycling bins eventually has to get emptied out by custodians or some other staff. The more viable you make it for them to empty the bins, the more they will do so correctly. If you make it difficult for staff to empty your bins, you typically end up with bins that don’t get emptied, recycling bins dumped into the trash, disgruntled employees, injured custodians or some combination of the above.
How does someone empty your bin? Do they have to lift a liner or bag out the top? If so, you really have to worry about the height of your container. Consider that a 3ft high container requires someone to dead-lift a bag or liner 6 ft in the air to get it out of the bin. If your bin is 4ft high, you are talking about an 8 ft dead lift. That makes it difficult for staff to service your bins and can lead to problems. It can also lead to a variety of safe-lifting issues. The last thing you want is injured staff. I recommend looking for bins that have front-opening service doors with liner bins inside.
Label your bins. If you have a recycling bin, inevitably, someone is going to have a question about what goes into it. The combination of a good label and a restrictive lid will go a long way toward ensuring that the proper stuff gets into the proper bin. So too will incorporating pictures into your label. The old cliché is often true that a picture is worth a thousand words. A simple picture can make it much faster and easier (especially in areas where you have multi-lingual waste generators or collection staff) to figure out what is supposed to go into a bin. Given that you often only have a few seconds of opportunity before someone throws something into any bin, regardless of whether it is right or wrong, conveying information quickly with a picture can help reduce cross-contamination.
Keep in mind though: high-aesthetic bins are a little trickier to label than other bins. Whereas a poster on the wall or a sticker placed on the side of a bin may work for most recycling bins, that same sticker or poster will often completely defeat the aesthetic you are aiming for. Be sure to work with the architect and folks that police the aesthetic of a given area (you might be surprised that there actually are aesthetics committees for many places). If your aesthetic allows for something with more of a poster-style label, look for ways to mount that signage into a frame to dress it up. You don’t want it to look like a sticker or poster on the side of the bin. For the text of your label, try to stick to fonts that are both easily readable and which convey the gravitas of the aesthetic. The same goes for any graphics that you use. The funky fonts or graphics that you might choose for a bulletin board in a residence hall typically should never be used on a high-aesthetic bin. Remember, recycling and trash bins in high-profile public areas are more than just a bucket into which stuff gets dumped. Effectively planning your public area recycling and waste collection system, and investing in the right bin for a given space goes a long way to determining the success of that program. That means choosing a bin that both matches the aesthetics of a given location and enhances your collection operation.
Join the conversation and tell us about the bins you’re currently using.
Roger Guzowski
Great article! One additional point I have that you didn’t mention: consistency throughout your organization. Don’t use one style/color in one department, then something different in the next. i.e., employees should find the same thing in HR as they do in Marketing, whether they’re a guest to the department or a transfer.
Hi Valerie,
Thank you for the nice feedback. I agree with you that consistency is helpful, but I didn’t include it my original post because I have seen and worked with some programs that have taken consistency, especially regarding color codes, too far.
Consistency can help with branding. It definitely helps in terms of having people immediately recognize your bins.
However, I have seen people become far too over-reliant on color codes to the point where they do not implement restrictive lids or good labels, both of which are in my opinion far more important.
I have also seen places in which consistency, especially regarding color codes, clash with building aesthetics. If that is happening to the point where your recycling bins are being relegated to back corners rather than prominent locations, then I think it is a mistake.
Having worked with both types of systems, the bottom line for me is that I think that consistent bins and color codes can be quite helpful but are secondary. I would rather have bins that are every color in the Crayola box if it means getting bins that have restrictive lids, good labels, and bins that are in prominent locations where they are going to be used.
What to other people think? Join in the discussion and let us know?
Now that recycling programs allow for a much greater diversity of items beyond just bottles, cans and paper, how do you accommodate differently shaped items, e.g. a square plastic deli take out container, with restrictive lids? We have bottle/can lids and paper lids at our school but they restrict other mainly plastic items that are now recyclable from being placed in the bin.
I am working with our Design and Construction folks to establish a standard for our school’s recycling bins and we need to make an informed decision that will be implemented across the campus. Your guidance and response via a direct email would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Leana
lhouser@jhu.edu