Why Your Trash and Recycling Website Isn’t Reaching Residents (And 3 Ways to Fix It)

Municipal websites are still relied upon sources for a resident to find local information about their recycling and waste program.

This is backed by a study in 2016 by Foodservice Packaging Institute, Inc., which asked 1000 U.S. homeowners which source they relied on most for recycling information. The results showed that the most popular source was from the city, county, or recycling company’s website, followed by signage on recycling carts (see graph below).

This trend in digital information has increased the public’s expectations of easy access to information. Studies show that when consuming website content, people are generally very impatient. In fact, on average, users only read 28% of the words on a webpage. That means they are NOT reading almost ¾ of the webpage’s content (who wants to be hit with a big wall of text anyway?). So, what happens when residents go to your municipal website and cannot easily find the recycling information they are looking for? They’ll probably call you… or just guess and contaminate their recycling bins.

Consequently, user-friendly websites that are light on text play a key role in helping municipal staff decrease their workload.  Time spent answering emails and calls is reduced, thus, the ability to provide public services becomes more efficient.

However, the surprising reality is that many municipalities are not providing easy-to-understand and easy access to recycling information, according to the Recycling Partnership. Their research show that “the reasons behind this are as numerous… from websites that need updating to a simple lack of staffing, to out-of-date or missing literature”.

So what can you do now to make sure your residents are part of the population that are receiving all the recycling information they need from your website?

1. Take advantage of the completely free, interactive web app by Recycle Coach that is customized to fit your website page(s) and is designed with resident usability in mind. It helps your resident quickly find information such as:

• Personalized collection and event schedules
• Collection requirements
• Drop-off depot locations and hours
• And more.

The best part – there is no obligation to upgrade and it has no expiry date.

2. Don’t just guess if recycling information can be found quickly and easily on your website. Try to find the information starting from a search in the perspective of a resident – if it takes more than a few seconds, think about what you could do to improve it:

• Include a search bar on the homepage of your website that would allow residents to search for pages that contain “recycling” or other key words
• Perform a SEO check-up so when a resident turns to Google to search “[your municipality] recycling” or something similar, your waste management page should be first in the organic search results
• Increase your website’s page load speed
• Include more visible links or ads on your website’s homepage to direct residents to your website’s waste management page

3. If you need a bit of help with boosting the content or web design of your municipal website: This site can help you with writing for the web and this one can help you with designing your website for easy navigation and usability. Plus there’s always the option to invest in a third party website designer and let them do what they do best.

Examples of some municipal websites that you can look to for inspiration are: Lancaster, TX and Tucson, AZ.