How Do You Motivate Someone to Recycle?
Today's guest blog is authored by Alec Cooley of Busch Systems. The original posting can be found here.
I got my start in the recycling field as a student volunteer in the early 90’s. Every week we set up a tabling display on my university’s quad that talked about the environmental benefits of recycling.
That message seemed obvious. It resonated with me personally as well as the other environmentally conscious students we spoke to. What we only slowly learned, and what most recycling educators now know is that this environmentally-focused message has little impact on the 80% or more of people who aren’t predisposed to respond to environmental issues. Our tabling efforts were a classic example of preaching to the choir.
Recycling is easy…right?
As much as we may have wanted people to care about recycling and the environment, the truth is that recycling educators have only one very specific job: get people to place recyclable items in the recycling bin. Simple enough,…