"Innovations" Case Studies: Serving Diverse Populations with Recycling

Costs, Economics, and Benefits

• Additional Staffing
• Additional Printing
• Survey/Auditing
• Translation
• Additional Distribution

Additional Staffing

Some communities incorporate diversity outreach into their current outreach program and rely upon their recycling/solid waste coordinator or outreach person to manage outreach to diverse populations. Other communities hire a specialized diversity outreach coordinator. Some communities may elect to hire multilingual staff to handle in-house translations, audits, and answering questions by phone.

Additional Printing

The cost of printing materials in other languages is usually the same as printing materials in English. Communities may incur additional costs when printing outreach materials in separate languages, because documents will have to be produced separately. Likewise, printing, production, and/or design costs may increase if communities use more graphics to convey their recycling message.

Survey/Auditing

According to one private consulting service that specializes in recycling outreach, its staff requires five to eight hours to perform an audit of a typical business, residence, or multifamily unit. A typical audit consists of an actual on-site interview, a report, data entry, and follow-up assistance. On-site bilingual auditors used by the consultant charge $45 to $50 per hour. Communities can use their own outreach personnel to conduct audits and track information, although this may require training costs.

Translation

Translating written outreach materials into other languages typically adds 15 to 20 percent to the cost of production. According to one private consultant service, translating recycling material costs more because often finding the right translations for recycling-related issues is difficult and time-consuming. California has many companies that provide professional translating services for technical documents.

San Francisco’s solid waste management program uses a professional translation service, which charges $45 per hour, to translate its outreach material into different languages. Computer retailers also offer a variety of off-the-shelf computer software programs that can perform translations. However, communities should be cautious when purchasing translation programs because certain software may be unable to properly translate the technical words used in recycling outreach materials.

Producing videos and public service announcements in different languages costs approximately 40 percent to 50 percent of the cost of the original version in English. Assuming a city pays $20,000 to produce its first version, a Spanish version would cost an additional $8,000 to $10,000. Reasons for this increased cost include added time for translations, increased costs of multilingual speakers, and increased costs of production (many languages require more time to get the same message across).

Additional Distribution

Communities may incur additional distribution costs when mailing multiple copies of the same outreach material in different languages. All communities contacted agreed that mailing multiple brochures costs more than mailing one multilingual brochure, even though the multilingual brochure would require more postage than just a single-language brochure.

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Last updated: October 26, 2007