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As haulers are making changes to their education efforts, streamlining is often top of mind. Implementing a waste education platform simplifies the process for customers and haulers alike, leading to lower contamination levels, a more educated customer base, and cleaner communities.
By Jessica Fantauzzo and Alana La Grave

Once simple and familiar, today’s recycling rules vary widely across municipalities and materials, leaving residential customers confused and bins consistently contaminated with non-recyclable materials. Since the global market shift in 2018, much of the responsibility for proper recycling has fallen to municipalities and waste haulers, and, ultimately, to consumers who often lack the local guidance they need, leading to high contamination and low recycling rates.

Further adding complication is the introduction of EPR legislation: policy intended to shift responsibility away from municipalities, haulers, and customers. EPR aims to hold producers responsible—physically and/or financially—for products in the post-consumer stage, further reshaping accountability in the recycling chain and introducing new layers of complexity to local education efforts.

In this evolving eco-system, where education is anything but straightforward, one fact remains unchanged: when residents are uncertain and left to wonder, they turn to:
• Searching the Internet, which can provide locally inaccurate results
• Rely on their own knowledge, which can lead to wish-cycling or throwing recyclable items in the trash
• Contact their local hauler with their questions, increasing call volume and directly impacting operational efficiency

The Role of Digital Education Platforms
A modern solution for waste and recycling education is no longer optional. Providing hyper-local disposal instructions and up-to-the-minute service alerts is essential to reduce contamination, save operational time, and improve outcomes. These platforms not only meet residents where they are, helping translate policy and information into simple, actionable guidance, they also allow for adaptation and regular maintenance when programs inevitably change or grow, while leaving room for two-way dialogue and customer feedback as needed.

The Importance of Recycling Engagement
Globally, 2.3 billion tons of municipal solid waste is produced annually. That number is projected to rise to 4.2 billion tons in the next 25 years.1 Managing this waste also costs billions of dollars in the U.S. alone, not to mention the added detriment to the environment, climate, and people’s health.

Only 19 percent of this MSW is recycled, which leaves the remaining 1.9 billion tons to be incinerated, sent to landfills, or to be left as litter. As haulers and municipalities alike confront rising waste volumes and increasing costs, education and engagement should be perceived as core operational strategies. Informed residents recycle more and recycle correctly.

Community Engagement Toolkit
If you’re not sure where to start when considering waste education and community involvement, these points can help spark ideas on what might work for your organization.

#1: Do Your Research and Identify Local Issues
Learning more about your community and its current waste practices is important for understanding how to go forward with educating your customers. Are some areas worse than others, and can you determine a reason why? Asking these kinds of questions will help guide your messaging, focus, and outreach efforts.

Calculating your facility’s contamination rates will also help you get a bigger picture of where you fit in the national average and establish how you would like to see that number improve.

#2: Get Involved in Your Community
A major part of educating customers comes from outreach and interaction. If you do not currently use social media, it can be a valuable tool to connect with customers and platform to share information about your local waste and recycling rules. While it can be a challenge to reach your intended audience, social media works best when paired with traditional methods of outreach, such as mailers and brochures, where you can promote your company’s socials.

Interacting in person—either through hosting or tabling at community events—allows your customers (and potential customers) to ask questions and learn more about your waste initiatives. Getting out into the community will also help you to gain insight into demographics, preferred methods of interaction, and community sentiment on your current education tactics.

#3: Determine the Benefits of a Waste Education Platform
Aside from financial considerations, it is important to find out how much time your staff spends responding to customer inquiries and updating your current educational tools. If your staff is lacking the time and resources to do these tasks, is your community feeling the effects of this? A good way to determine this is by not only calculating your contamination rates, but also speaking with members of your community. This does not have to just be at an event, it can also be in the form of an online poll, survey, or message box.

Streamlining Education
As haulers are making changes to their education efforts, streamlining is often top of mind. Waste education platforms are alleviating workload and time spent answering customer inquiries. Implementing a waste education platform simplifies the process for customers and haulers alike, leading to lower contamination levels, a more educated customer base, and cleaner communities.
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Case Study: Atlas Disposal Making a Difference with Recycling Education Platforms

Education is the key to reducing waste and increasing recycling rates. Better educated customers produce less waste and recycle more. And it goes beyond that: they recycle more items correctly. When haulers implement targeted, informative waste and recycling education, customers respond.

For Atlas Disposal, providing great customer service has always been about staying connected to customers. However, with an increasing number of calls coming in every month, from missed pick-ups to material disposal questions, they needed a smarter way to educate and inform their customer base.

By launching a branded mobile app in partnership with Recycle Coach, residents can now easily look up how to dispose of materials correctly, schedule bulky pick-up appointments, and receive service reminders, all without picking up the phone. Within their first five months of launching, more than 5,000 users had adopted the app and call volume dropped by 50 percent.

This early success has enabled their customer service team to focus on complex issues, and empowered customers to find the answers to the information they need, exactly when they need it.

To learn more about the launch of Atlas Disposal’s branded app, scan here:

Jessica Fantauzzo and Alana La Grave are the Head of Marketing and the Marketing Specialist at Recycle Coach, a digital waste education platform and all-in-one communication tool. Designed to engage and educate users, Recycle Coach makes recycling and waste disposal easy with schedules, a comprehensive search tool, collection reminders, and more. For more information, contact us at [email protected] or visit .

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