How to Collect More Waste and Recycling Without Breaking Your Budget

Recycling Education and Engagement Tools

As a government waste collection administrator, you know how it goes. You’ve been tasked with building or improving a waste collection program, with two seemingly contradictory objectives:

1. First, find ways to improve collection rates and divert as much recyclable waste from landfill as possible.
2. On the other hand, do it with limited budget and continual staff shortages.

Unfortunately, budget restrictions and limited resources mean your quotas can easily fall short.

It’s not enough to just coordinate collection events or put a regular pickup program in place. Residents need to be properly informed.  What are the rules? What time does the collection happen? They need guidance to learn how to participate effectively and with little disruption to their busy days. The problem is that marketing costs money and time, not to mention a skillset your team might be unable to fill.

The good news is that Recycle Coach already has resources in place that can help you reach your goals without breaking the your recycling budget (or your staff).

Continuing Education and Engagement Tools

Recycle Coach’s mobile app and website are both filled with useful tools and information, making them the go-to destination for residents who want to become better recyclers.  We feature a growing library of engaging articles, blog posts and information that attracts new visitors and residents every day and brings current members back again and again.

Below are just some of the ways we can help you reach more residents and engage them more effectively, for little to no cost:

Encyclopedic Information *Free Generic Information*: Our powerful “What Goes Where?” search tool averages 3 million searches every year. By making searchable disposal information instantly accessible from mobile, residents are able to process waste correctly . The data can be easily customized to match your municipality’s requirements. Our databases bring users to our site from all over the world, and allow residents to share information and teach their neighbors.

Residents can now use Recycle Coach’s “What Goes Where?” right from Facebook messenger, Google Home, and Alexa! No downloads are required to use it and there’s no additional work for you either.

Facebook: Residents will simply message Recycle Coach on Facebook and ask the bot how to dispose of any item. Contact us to learn how you can customize the search results for your specific municipality.  

Google Home & Alexa: Residents just need to ‘wake’ their digital assistants, call upon Recycle Coach or the Waste Wizard, and ask their question. For example, “OK Google, ask the Waste Wizard if I can recycle wine glasses” or “Alexa, ask Recycle Coach if I can put plastic bags in my recycling bin”. Contact us to learn how you can customize the search results for your specific municipality. 

Blogs *Free*: Recycle Coach’s blog posts cover a wide range of recycling-related topics, including everything from day-to-day best practices and advice for homeowners to information for city administrators looking to stretch their marketing and education dollars.

• For your residents, we offer a separate set of blogs just for them! This means helpful information they can share with their friends at home and abroad. Sharing helps us build awareness and community, even in places that have not officially adopted the app.
• For waste program administrators, we offer insight into social media and marketing best practices, new ways of looking at your local demographics, as well as recommendations that help you reach your residents more effectively.

Webinars *Free*: If you’re looking for more technical help when it comes to maximizing your reach, check out our list of practical webinars for municipal waste coordinators. These free video-based seminars cover topics ranging from marketing and outreach strategies to coverage of recent recycling data reports, and they are designed to help you maximize your communications efforts.

Interactive Calendars, and Collection Reminders *Free*: The Recycle Coach website also includes tools such as our free calendars that residents can use to send automated collection reminders to their phones and email accounts. Residents can set a reminder for the times that works best with their schedules. 

What Type of Recycler Are You? Quiz: One of the key ways we attract residents is through interactive learning tools, such as our What Type of Recycler Are You? quiz. This quiz not only helps residents self-evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to recycling, but it encourages them to become better recyclers by showing them how to enhance their strengths and improve their weaknesses.  Our quizzes are shared widely, as residents challenge friends and family to compare scores and share surprising results.

Your Residents May Already Be Onboard

Thousands of cities and towns already belong to the Recycle Coach network and all of these sharing capabilities make it easy for residents to share information from our app and website with their neighbors. This means they’re spreading the word with no cost to you. Even better, we find that individuals keep using their apps even when they move to areas that aren’t part of our network, because, they tell us, the information helps provide guidelines, even when it’s not customized to their new location.

In many cases, residents in Recycle Coach communities spread the word to their out-of-town friends and family, which means your municipality probably already has a cluster of Recycle Coach app users waiting for you to mobilize them. Our network of engaged citizens also connect with each other through the thousands links on municipal websites that actively promote the service.

Direct Access to Your Residents

The Recycle Coach app gives governments the ability to communicate with their residents one-on-one, making it easy to relay program information, changes in scheduling and special instructions more effectively than blanket marketing campaigns. Not only is your messaging delivered directly into their hands, but you can also track success and open rates, which means you can continue to improve your messaging over time and make it more effective.

The built-in What Goes Where? directory and our answers to commonly asked questions can also be easily customized to your location. This means that residents gain instant access to the information they need, when they need it, and this access directly correlates to improved program success across the board. Better yet, all this happens without having to pay high advertising or promotion costs.

Ready to see why thousands of cities and towns are already on board? Try Recycle Coach for free! Set-up is easy with our dedicated Customer Success Coaches doing all the work to setup AND maintain your platforms.
 

About Recycle Coach: Recycle Coach specializes in digital solutions for municipal and private waste management services to effectively educate and engage residents. Our technology platforms for web, mobile, and digital assistants focus on education and encouragement to help residents to be better recyclers, with the goal of inspiring positive and lasting change in communities around the world. It is our constant innovation and scalability of services that allow us to meet the needs of over 3000 communities across the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and more.