"Innovations" Case Studies: Serving Diverse Populations with Recycling

Case Study: San Francisco

• Overview
• Program Characteristics
• Costs, Economics, and Benefits

Overview

San Francisco is a diverse city with more than 700,000 people, according to the 1990 U.S. Census. More than 40 percent of San Francisco’s population speaks a language other than English, and more than 20 percent do not speak English “very well.”

In 1998 the city’s waste diversion rate was 40 percent (35 percent for residential waste diversion and 46 percent for commercial waste diversion). The city uses a variety of different media to reach out to its diverse population. According to the city’s recycling coordinator, different cultures respond to different media. The city’s recycling outreach department hires an outside firm to oversee community focus group meetings in order to determine the best ways to reach the city’s population.

Outreach officials learned from these focus group meetings to target residents of different cultures differently, because certain media may be more motivational to some cultures than others. Some cultures may respond to television and newspaper advertisements, while others may require more direct one-on-one outreach. Information retrieved from the focus group meetings also showed that recycling officials might need to educate certain residents on the basics of recycling before focusing on more detailed recycling issues.

Program Characteristics

City coordinators undertake two neighborhood campaigns each year to increase recycling rates and cover the entire city every three years. The neighborhood campaigns consist of direct mail, phone banking, advertisements in local papers, presentations, posters, and street signs. During the campaign, the city mails trilingual postcards on recycling and waste reduction to virtually every home in the neighborhood.

Table: Demographics of San Francisco (Source: 1990 U.S. Census and San Francisco Fact Sheet, September 1999)

Multilingual outreach staff members personally contact 30,000 households per year with their recycling and waste reduction message. The city publishes monthly multilingual (Chinese, Spanish, and English) advertisements in neighborhood newspapers.

Recycling officials have a number of multilingual brochures, posters, flyers, and other media pieces to use in neighborhood presentations that are held at events such as festivals and neighborhood meetings. The city also offers youth organizations the chance to win $1,000 to $2,000 for increasing recycling in their neighborhood.

In the past, the city has produced separate brochures printed in different languages. Although many of these materials are still used in recycling outreach, the city currently produces and mails single brochures written in at least three languages. The city’s outreach coordinator believes that producing and mailing single-language brochures is less effective than sending multilingual brochures, because citizens may receive a brochure in a language that they cannot understand.

The city is in the process of simplifying the pickup of recyclables and waste by implementing a three-cart system: one 32-gallon cart for commingled dry recyclables, one 32-gallon cart for yard trimmings and food discards, and a 32-gallon cart for remaining trash.

The recycling outreach department has recently switched from using icons to photos in its recycling brochures and on stickers. “Real-life” materials are shown in the photos, allowing residents to see, very clearly, what items are acceptable to place in their recycling bins. According to the city’s recycling coordinator, the use of pictures has received positive feedback from residents.

A separate company provides household hazardous waste pickup to all residents on an on-call basis. The company offers seniors and disabled residents free service, which they can apply for when a company representative arrives to pick up their household hazardous waste. For the most part, the company accepts the word of the residents about their senior or disabled status.

The city’s waste hauler also offers special rates for seniors and disabled residents, though the hauler requires that the residents provide proof. The hauler also provides special pickup services for variable fees based on the distance from the curb, whether or not the collector must climb stairs, and other criteria.

The city joins with its hauler in placing trilingual stickers and posters in its apartment buildings. It provides residential oil collection and on-call oil collection to all residents. Residents can also request bulky item pickup two times per year for recyclable items such as appliances, metal, yard trimmings, and other large currently non-recyclable materials.

San Francisco hosts a trilingual hotline that plays recycling and source reduction messages in English, Cantonese, and Spanish. San Francisco restaurant owners and managers can obtain a recycling guide for restaurants in either English, Chinese, or Spanish from the city.

The city also has an extensive recycling Web site, under “departments and city agencies/recycling” at http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/  to improve recycling collection, signs on recycling containers in the financial district are in English, Chinese, and Arabic, the language most commonly spoken by custodial staff.

The city has also improved recycling in areas visited by tourists and residents. For instance, it has attached crab catcher metal racks to many trash receptacles to help collect recyclables. The city has also ecopop receptacles on top of trashcans to facilitate recycling by residents and tourists.

Costs, Economics, and Benefits

Although the recycling outreach department pays more to reach out to diverse populations, it does not separately track these costs as a percentage of its overall budget. San Francisco typically spends about $120,000 ($60,000 per campaign) per year on the neighborhood outreach campaigns. The city also pays to translate, design, print, and distribute all multicultural outreach materials.

The city uses professional translators to convert its outreach material to different languages. The translating services charge approximately $135 (three hours at $45 per hour) to translate an article or advertisement. They charge approximately $225 (five hours at $45 per hour) to translate a one-page brochure. The department pays the same to print and mail either separate single-language brochures or one multilingual brochure, because multilingual brochures are proportionally expanded to accommodate for the additional languages.

For example, the city would pay two-thirds more for a three-language brochure than a single-language brochure. The brochure design is the only other additional cost incurred by the city to produce multilingual brochures. Design costs the department more due to the difficulty of creating an easily readable brochure. Organization of words and selection of colors play a more important role in multilingual brochures. For instance, readers of a three-language brochure might more easily distinguish their language if it is printed in a different color.

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Last updated: October 26, 2007