Waste World - Episode 73: Rethinking Recycling Through Better Collection Systems

Now, a second ago, you mentioned the word convenience, and that is a big, powerful driver in the world of waste recycling.

As long as it's convenient, people are going to do it or it's easier to take care of.

And so what has your experience shown when people are given a convenient option? I imagine people are willing to do things or they do things correctly.

Yeah, I think that's the working assumption, right? I mean, people are people and some just won't want to recycle.

Some of my relatives are like that, unfortunately.

And so I spend many dinner parties telling them about recycling and trying to convince them to recycle, but they're just the way they are.

But my working assumption is most people will do the right thing if it's convenient for them.

And this is why I point to the example in British Columbia, we couldn't get to over 90% recycling if we weren't providing that convenience and providing that messaging out to the general group of population that will want to recycle.

And that ranges from household recycling you know right through to commercial and small garages and lube shops some of those employees are super busy in their businesses and they'll just they need you know they're paid by the hour or whatever they need to do things really efficiently so we have to match that efficiency and i would say our results are showing that we're doing the right thing

and even that like people i mean people get busy there are people are people also people just make mistakes or because they don't know they're like well It's plastic.

It must be able to go in recycling.

I don't know.

And messed the whole thing up.

So having a convenient option that is easily learnable and teachable to people, I think that makes a big difference.

Yeah.

We

don't want them to turn over the plastic bottle and understand the number and then go Google the system and figure out what bin to put it in.

We just want them to put it in a bin that's recycling and we'll take it from there.

So that for me, the simplest solution is just that the simplest design, keep it simple.

if it's hard plastic put it in the same bin we'll take it from there we have technology in our sorting facilities and be able to recycle that stuff don't make the consumer don't make the you know small business do too much

yeah take the guessing

out of their hands and just like this is

this is the way it's done so

they can just keep wishing and their wishes will come true

right yeah it's like a nice wishing well of recycling right All right.