How do you raise awareness for recycling? Recycling centers raise awareness for their services through advertising on the backs of water bills, door hangers and local cable access channel commercials. These...
These days, people are always in a hurry and it can be difficult and time-consuming in some regions to recycle, but everyone should know what the benefits to recycling are. It may change their minds and make them more proactive about it. Raising awareness about recycling and conservation can be difficult for the average person, but your hard work will pay off. By advertising locally, making recycling easy and offering incentives, you can get people to recycle who otherwise wouldn't and the planet will thank you for it.
The first step is to make people aware of the facilities available to them near where they live. Most people don't think to recycle because they don't know there is a recycling center in their city. Tracy Herring, Supervisor for the City of Round Rock Environmental Services in Round Rock, Texas says, "A lot of people don't really know that the recycling center is actually here. I've served here for 10 years, and it's been in this place since before I got here, probably over 12 years." For some, it might not be that they do not have the time to recycle, just that they are not aware of the resources available to them.
The recycling centers themselves have more access to major media outlets than the average citizen, so you might leave that kind of advertising up to them. They can put ads on television and radio and work with power and water companies to offer incentives for conservation. Herring says, "We advertise in the water bill. We try to do some advertising on the local cable access channel." They use their resources to pass on information about recycling and its benefits.
So, the recycling centers have the upper hand and the work they do for themselves benefits recycling programs the most. An individual's influence is limited, but what you can do is tell everyone you know where, how and why to recycle and tell them to pass the word on. Tracy Herring says that in a survey that her facility conducted, "about 70% of people who came [to the center] knew about it either through word of mouth or from driving by." Also, tell them that they can find information on the Web. Herring says, "There is a cool Web site called www.earth911.org where you can type in your zip code and it will tell you what recycling operations are available in your area. They also have public service announcements that you can purchase from them and have them personalized with the city's logo or your organization."
Education and word-of-mouth advertising are the best ways to increase awareness about recycling. People who think they don't have time to recycle need to be shown how easy it can be for them. And, people who don't know how to recycle need to find the facilities in their area and learn how to contact the facilities for more information. The informed citizens of a city should pass the word along and help the uninformed become recyclers.
