Increasing collection, decreasing contamination
Increasing collection, decreasing contamination
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Feet on the Street (FOTS) is a recycling initiative that was launched as a pilot program by The Recycling Partnership (TRP) and was the topic of the keynote session on the second day of the WasteExpo Together Online Conference on Sept. 15.
Feet on the Street was created, in part, in response to China’s National Sword policies and is now the foundation for TRP’s mission to promote recycling around the country. Those involved in FOTS in Atlanta spoke during the session to discuss the program, how it started, how it’s working, and the lessons learned throughout the first year.
Attendees heard from TRP’s Recycling Technical Advisor Cecilia Shutters; the city of Atlanta’s Keep Atlanta Beautiful Commission’s Executive Director Kanika Greenlee; the city of Atlanta’s Keep Atlanta Beautiful Commission’s Community Affairs Manager Moses Tejuoso and Coca-Cola North America’s Sustainable Packaging Program Director Nicole Smith.
How Coca-Cola is helping
Smith shared during her presentation that Coca-Cola’s goal is a world without waste, hoping to make packaging 100 percent recyclable over the next decade.
“Our goal is to collect every bottle and can that we put into the marketplace by 2030, so that’s a pretty big goal,” Smith said.
It isn’t just about the packaging though, Smith added that it starts within communities. Many cities need help getting collection sites placed around town as well as help in educating residents on recycling best practices. Coca-Cola is investing in these communities, working with TRP, to help create less waste and get more bottles and cans back into the material stream.
Because of its investment, Coca-Cola is a big part of how Atlanta reached its residents for its Feet on the Street campaign.
“As part of our broader ‘world without waste’ goals, we’re trying to help get access, get participation and help guide people to recycle right,” Smith said. “It’s really challenging to do that, and we recognize the need for stakeholders like ourselves to be a part of that conversation, but then [we need] to measure the benefits of what’s progressing and changing within communities’ recycling rates. By getting better data, we can actually see how we’re doing.”
Atlanta’s goals
FOTS started in 2017
with a small pilot program. Organizers monitored over 5,000 homes over seven
weeks to see what would change when it came to curbside collection. Not only
did contamination decrease, but participation increased. These results pushed
the Keep Atlanta Beautiful Commission to want to expand the program city-wide.
However, expanding to
that degree can be a financial strain for city governments, so that’s where
Coca-Cola stepped in, as it launched a three-year mission in 2019 to reach
every home in Atlanta.
“Our goal was to reach
all 98,000 single-family homes in the city of Atlanta,” Greenlee said. “We did
that over the course of five months starting in September of 2019 and
concluding in January of this year.”
The goal was to take it
one step at time, first focusing on increased collection and decreased
contamination.
Greenlee said that TRP
developed an app to help the city track contamination. It also conducted a
study from before and after the program to compare the numbers. Just in the few
months of 2019, contamination was down 19 percent, close to the 25 percent
goal. “That’s why we set [goals], so we have something to achieve and work towards.
We have a little bit of work to do to get to our goals of reducing
contamination, but we are well on our way,” Greenlee said.
The next step was to
focus on participation and to get each person to actually use their curbside
recycling bins.
All about outreach
When it came to notifying the public
about this campaign and raising awareness to increase participation, Atlanta Community
Affairs manager Moses Tejuoso took an expansive approach. He used several types
of media to share information about the “Know What To Throw” campaign. He used
radio ads, social media posts and other forms of online outreach.
Additionally, traditional print
advertising, near bus stops for example, was also put up across the city.
Tejuoso said those traditional ads worked well during the 2017 pilot-program,
so they were used once again for this. They worked well, bringing in thousands
of more clicks to the city of Atlanta’s recycling webpage in 2019 and much more
awareness of the campaign.
After months of
tracking residents’ habits, the next phase of the campaign, “Better Together”
will incorporate new ways to increase resident participation.
“We’re going to focus
on areas that had low participation and really drive those numbers up,”
Greenlee said “We kind of know what the behavior is now of our residents and what type of recyclers they are, so that’s
really going to drive how we move forward in regard to our participation
campaign.”
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Source: Recycling Today
Increasing collection, decreasing contamination
<![CDATA[Feet on the Street (FOTS) is a recycling initiative that was launched as a pilot program by The Recycling Partnership (TRP) and was the topic of the keynote session on the second day of the WasteExpo Together Online Conference on Sept. 15. Feet on the Street was created, in part, in response to China’s National Sword policies and is now the foundation for TRP’s mission to promote recycling around the country. Those involved in FOTS in Atlanta spoke during the session to discuss the program, how it started, how it’s working, and the lessons learned throughout the first year.Attendees heard from TRP’s Recycling Technical Advisor Cecilia Shutters; the city of Atlanta’s Keep Atlanta Beautiful Commission’s Executive Director Kanika Greenlee; the city of Atlanta’s Keep Atlanta Beautiful Commission’s Community Affairs Manager Moses Tejuoso and Coca-Cola North America’s Sustainable Packaging Program Director Nicole Smith. How Coca-Cola is helpingSmith shared during her presentation that Coca-Cola’s goal is a world without waste, hoping to make packaging 100 percent recyclable over the next decade. “Our goal is to collect every bottle and can that we put into the marketplace by 2030, so that’s a pretty big goal,” Smith said. It isn’t just about the packaging though, Smith added…