September 22, 2015

City Outreach Efforts to Increase Roselawn Recycling Rate

‘Recycling Ambassadors’ to survey 1,500 households

CINCINNATI – An expansive door-to-door initiative in Roselawn is set to boost recycling participation rates in the neighborhood while establishing innovative ways to make it easier for current recyclers to do so more often.

The City of Cincinnati, Rumpke, Keep Cincinnati Beautiful, Green Umbrella and Save-A-Lot have come together to commission “Recycling Ambassadors” to survey all 1,500 Roselawn households and local businesses to determine waste and recycling habits, answer questions, and provide simple tips to make recycling a daily habit.

Each ambassador is trained to identify potential barriers to recycling and come up with ways to remove them.

“About 62 percent of Roselawn residents currently participate in the City’s recycling program,” said Sue Magness, recycling coordinator for the City of Cincinnati. “We want to increase participation by at least 10 percent to get the neighborhood participation over the City average of 70 percent.”

Ambassadors started knocking on doors this Monday and will continue to do so for the next six to eight weeks in order to reach every residence in Roselawn as well as small businesses, churches and schools in the neighborhood.

The goal of the campaign is to increase recycling and divert waste from the landfill by finding out what keeps people from recycling. The City will use the information gathered to help with future neighborhood recycling campaigns.

“Gathering information on how people recycle in their home, what makes it difficult, or what makes it easy, is important in learning how to increase recycling in the neighborhood,” Magness said. “Different communities have different obstacles. This campaign is designed to learn about the obstacles in Roselawn and to solve them.”

As part of this endeavor, Roselawn residents are eligible to win one of several $200 Save-A-Lot gift cards by making an online commitment to recycle online. One winner will be selected each week during the campaign.

“Supporting the community is important to us,” said Roselawn Save-A-Lot store manager Robert Pearson, “this is one of the few family owned Save-A-Lots in this area and we have dedicated ourselves to Roselawn and the residents here. Roselawn was identified as a food desert community and we felt that we needed to help change that so we planted our roots here.”

For more information about recycling in Cincinnati, please call 513-352-3200 or visit http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/recycling/