RECYCLING IN MULTIFAMILY DWELLINGS - INCREASING PARTICIPATION AND DECREASING CONTAMINATION

This study explored the promotion of recycling in multi-family dwellin gs. An experimental design investigated four behavior change technique s: biweekly postcards giving specific feedback to each dwelling unit a s to quantity and contamination of the recyclables, newsletters giving general information on recycling and the amount recycled by the city as a whole, written pledges committing households to recycle for a spe cified period, and volunteer coordinators who distributed information and answered questions from residents. The effectiveness of these tech niques was compared against that of a control group. The findings sugg est that volunteer coordinators are not an effective intervention tech nique in multi-family dwellings, and that feedback and commitment tech niques are useful mainly for managing contamination in medium sized co mplexes. The data also suggest that the size of a multi-family dwellin g complex significantly affects the amount of recyclables collected an d the level of contamination. Smaller complexes with less than ten uni ts recycled up to three times the amount on a per unit basis as comple xes with more units. Smaller units also had fewer problems with contam ination in their recyclables. Several explanations are offered for the poor participation and performance in larger complexes.