In this podcast, I share my observations at a recycling collection event for plastics, batteries and styrofoam held recently near Portland, Oregon called Planetcon. The line to drop off plastic bags and film started to get really long, and extend all the way back to my table.
I was at the event for another reason, to setup a table and promote Recycling Advocates’ BYOC campaign.
Links
* Planetcon 2019
* Planetcon videos
* Video: New York Food Bank with Toyota
Transcript
I’d like to talk about an event I attended the other day, this weekend actually. This was a recycling education repair fair and I think they did some Styrofoam and battery collection as well. I just wanted to talk through when I go to events like these, I was actually tabling at the event for my nonprofit, and just made some observations. I was by the area where they were dropping off plastic film and plastic bags for recycling and things kind of backed up really far, and the line got really long and so, of course, it’s hard not to watch and see what’s going on and try to figure out what’s happening.
First off, with any kind of volunteer activity like this, we have to have respect for people. The people who were organizing this, I have nothing against them. They’re wonderful, they’re great. All this stuff is just my observations about how we could maybe improve for next time. It’s not meant to point fingers at anyone or say someone did it wrong or not. There’s a lot of things that could be improved even on people who’ve been doing processes and running events for years and years. These are just observations I made and things I’ll try to bring up to the organizers for next year, so it runs maybe a little bit better. Same with the volunteers, everyone was working really hard. Just like when I look at a process or a business, most of the time, 99% of the time, people are trying to do a good job and they’re working really hard, and so a lot of the ideas we want to do and put in place is things that make the job easier or smarter or less chaotic, safer, and more fun; not to make people work harder or go faster.
First of all, the line started to form and build up over time. There was about 10 people who actually left because they didn’t want to wait around. They thought it was going to be a quick drop-off of their bags and film and they were surprised when there was a line and they were like, “Where do I just drop this off so I can leave?”
I think setting expectations for people, in the future, on how long this actually takes, that it’s not something you just drop-off, but that there is going to be a wait because we’re going to go through and make sure there’s a clean drop-off of what they’re bringing in, there’s no contamination going to the plastic recycling center, so that requires someone to go through and do that. I think that would be one thing to do is you really have to set your customer’s expectations clearly.
Based on that issue that I observed, there was a lot of frustration with people in line. They stuck around through the whole thing, but it probably was not a great experience for them, at least the people who were there during the really busy times, and I’ll talk about the times a little bit. There was a couple of different things they could bring over. The two primary things was the film, which would be like outer plastic wrap around packaging,
