ASSUMPTIONS

To calculate regional curbside participation rates in Table 5, we made the following assumptions:

• Participation is defined by the number of stops on a recycling collection route. We have data on pick up frequency for each municipality, but no data on how often users actually place materials out for pick up.

• All curbside programs defined their service areas by town or city limits, therefore service area is based on total population and number of households.

• For municipalities with unknown participation numbers, an 78% participation rate was assumed. We based this figure by taking the median of RRS’s 84% participation rate assumption in their 2016 report "Recycling in Michigan" and The Recycling Partnership’s 72% participation rate assuming in their 2020 State of Curbside Report. We presume this to be a good estimate given default programs tend to have higher participation rates.

• *Frankfort's participation also was presumed to be 78% and 5,634 households served because they provided us with a figure (9,400) that included their business customers.

Table 6 shows how average diversion rates of regional curbside recycling programs compare to the national average. Average lbs. per year captured per household (hh) is a common figure computed to measure the performance of curbside recycling programs. As is visible, each curbside program yields a different average. Unfortunately, no tonnage data was available from the larger haulers who service the region so they could not be used in calculations.

Key Findings

• The average participation rate in curbside recycling in the region is 69%

• The average amount recycled per participating household per year in the region is 338 lbs. The national average, for comparison, is 357 lbs.

Access, a measure of a typical user’s convenience to residential recycling services and collection points, is a direct indicator of a recycling programs’ participation rate. We analyze two types of access: physical (proximity to collection points) and material (the breadth of materials accepted in local recycling program). Physical access can be further refined by type of program: curbside or drop off.

Curbside access is defined simply as a hauler’s service area for curbside collection – often city or town limits. It can be further defined by the type of households eligible for curbside service. Most programs in metropolitan areas are only available to single family homes with 4 units or less meaning multi-family homes (apartment complexes) are ineligible.

Drop off access is defined simply by how conveniently located the drop off is for the majority of residents. However, various opinions exist within the recycling community on what to consider a reasonable distance from drop off site to a user’s residence (ranging from 2.5 to 30 miles). What is considered a reasonable distance varies depending on whether the drop off is sited in a rural or urban area. Our analysis was based upon a usage radius of 5 miles which for rural areas is considered close, and in urban areas considered farther, therefore we have also provided the access coverage results for a 2-mile radius.

The graphs that follow and detailed tables provide a depiction of physical access to curbside and drop off recycling by county throughout the region. In our analysis, convenient access is defined as a resident falling within curbside service or within 5 miles of a community drop off.

KEY FINDINGS - PHYSICAL ACCESS

• Overall, physical access coverage is high at 87% of the region’s population falling within curbside service area or within 5 miles of a community recycling drop off.

• Curbside gaps: A few programs were suspended for financial reasons and because a regional private recycler, Werner & Son, burnt down in summer 2019. Flora and Winamac no longer have curbside programs but both have centrally located drop off sites in town. Frankfort is now running on reduced capacity because of the fire as well.

• Dropoff area gaps were noted in S. Carroll, N & S Clinton, NE White , and NW Tippecanoe.

Beyond physical access, we looked at access based on materials accepted within the recycling stream, i.e. material access. Glass and Plastic #3-#7s are the two common material types getting dropped from residential recycling programs across the nation since Chinese import restrictions on recovered materials went into effect. We see this pattern occurring in the region as well and so choose to look specifically at these materials. Regardless, these resin types are still being manufactured and widely used in consumer goods. Until they are phased out for more recyclable alternatives, it’s an important step to review the access gaps for these ubiquitous materials in the residential recycling stream.

KEY FINDINGS - MATERIAL ACCESS

• Glass is about equally accepted at county drop off programs as curbside programs.

• Plastics #3-#7 are more widely accepted in curbside programs than county drop offs.

• It is odd that certain curbside programs did not accept glass and plastics while the drop offs did even if the hauler or destination MRF was the same (i.e. in Francesville, Logansport).

In an era where many recycling programs budgets are turned on their head and under scrutiny – it’s important to look closely at contamination. Consistent high rates of contamination are a killer when it comes to the economic feasibility and longevity of recycling programs. We asked stakeholders what the most common contaminants in their programs were to get a picture of contamination patterns for the region; the results follow.

KEY FINDINGS – CONTAMINATION

• No hard data on contamination rates exist for the region.

• Overall, the region struggles the most with contamination from food residue.

• The two other common contaminants are film and Styrofoam. Both are commonly
  referenced and targeted in anti-contamination campaigns in programs across the US.

• There were no strategic anti-contamination campaigns. With the exception of West Lafayette and Lafayette, when asked what anti-contamination efforts were taken by
  each entity, the responses were:

• no response;

• we don’t have contamination;

• throw in thetrash;

• talk to them in person; and

• put out a newsletter or newspaper article.

Every recycling program needs a foundation of consistent education and outreach, particularly as programs start, change, or suffer high rates of contamination. In the absence of hard data on the respective reach and results of each educational effort over 30 entities, and rather than conduct a 10-county survey of residents and back into an assumption on a program’s education efforts, we created a scoring system that simply measures the diversity of education efforts utilized by each municipality and district.

EDUCATION UTILIZATION SCORE

The education utilization score is an attempt to objectively measure the degree and diversity of educational outreach mechanisms employed by each municipality or solid waste management district. This score is not indicative of residents’ recycling knowledge nor a direct measure of the health of a recycling program. Purdue and the IRC developed educational matrices independently, found them to be nearly identical, and combined the results. The matrix then went through four rounds of revisions based on partner discussion and feedback from external stakeholders including The Recycling Partnership, Indiana Department of Environmental Management, Association of Solid Waste Management Districts, and a Solid Waste Management District Director.

QUALIFICATIONS

We believe the overall regional average for districts and municipalities provides more meaningful insight than the individual scores. As there are many potential factors which can influence an entity’s education score that are not necessarily reflective of the health of their recycling programs. Most entities fall within two standard deviations above or below the mean educational utilization score - as depicted in Table 15. The sample data is spread wide demonstrating that entities vary significantly when it comes to their educational outreach means and efforts.

The plot graph below is the visual result of our exploration into whether or a not a district’s education utilization score correlates with their tons recycled. As you can see, each districts score as calculated above was compared to the 2018 tons recycled each district reported to IDEM in their annual recycling activity reports (Clinton and Fountain Co. SWMD lacked 2018 data so are not included in the plot). A trend line does emerge with an R2 value of .66. However, the sample size is very small and we see the correlative relationship as nothing more than exploratory. We have included it to show an area in which other IN recycling studies could expand given more quantitative data.

KEY FINDINGS

• Having a Full or Part time Educator on staff did not prove to be a good metric because the majority of district directors and municipal employees share the responsibility for educational efforts or it’s baked into their jobs among other key responsibilities. It’s relatively rare that a district or municipality will have a full-time “Educator” on staff, however, most directors consider their main role to be education. A better metric would be “full time director” for districts. For municipalities, this metric would need to be rethought given none of them have educators on staff.

• The average district uses about 60% of all the potential mechanisms for education in their tool belt. The scores in counties where there is no strong district presence come in lower.

• With an education utilization score of 40%, municipalities use about half the tools that districts do and their scores generally come in lower indicating that they are overall less involved in educational efforts than districts. This signifies the districts fulfill an important role in education that municipalities are not or cannot fill likely due to resource constraints.

• The highest municipal scores are the largest cities in the region – all of whom manage their own programs through their Street & Sanitation Departments. The one aberration is a large city who has contracted out their recycling program. This indicates that a larger city, given adequate resources, can accomplish educational efforts – but those larger cities that fully contract out recycling services are at the mercy of their service provider to provide education to residents.

• The use of social media is the biggest commonality among municipalities (all Facebook) and for districts it is bin signage. This indicates that social media would be the easiest mechanism to deploy education in metro areas.

• The use of bin signage is the biggest commonality amongst districts; however, it is concerning that bin signage was not the biggest commonality for municipalities as well. This may be result of the change of contract ownership and lack of largescale deployment of uniform curbside recycling bins in the region. Upon visual examination, even within city limits, multiple types, sizes, and colors of bins exist.

• The least used educational tools for both municipalities and districts are known to be resource intensive: Grant Programs and A-Z Recycling Guides. The former is natural given that funding is available through the state through IDEM and the latter is also expected given its cumbersome and more costly to create, print, and update.

• Untapped areas are direct mailers and digital communication such as emails, social media, and robust and up to date websites.

While inferring potential infrastructure improvements via mapping quantitative data is novel, the intimate and invaluable understanding of regional challenges and potential improvements is held by those operating recycling programs. Therefore, each recycling program operator in the region was asked the following questions: 1) “What is the greatest challenge of your recycling program?” and, 2) “If you were given $1 million to improve your program, what would you do?”

KEY FINDINGS - REGIONAL CHALLENGES & INVESTMENTS

We found the shared challenges faced by regional recycling stakeholders to be

• funding;

• contamination & illegal dumping;

• education of decision makers and users, especially across disparate recycling
  programs; and

• finding buyers for recovered plastics.

The most frequently cited investment ideas for the region are as follows:

• educational campaigns; and

• upgrade existing equipment to increase efficiency or expand capacity.

Detailed responses can be seen on p. 72 of the report.

Next we review the distance residential recycling is traveling in the region. For the ease of analysis, we split this into two distinct trips or ‘levels’:

collection level – defined as the distance recyclables travel from their collection point at a remote drop off or curbside bin to their next physical location which is a public or private recycling center or transfer station.

processing level - defined as the distance semi-processed materials travel from their first destination (public/private small recycling centers, or transfer stations) to secondary destinations for further processing (large MRFs, secondary processors, and/or end users)

KEY FINDINGS – COLLECTION LEVEL

For the collection level of material flow (i.e. from satellite drop-off sites and curbside to recycling centers), the average one-way trip is 15.7 miles and the median one-way trip is 12.8 miles. One revolution of each of the 53 drop offs and eight curbside programs to their first destination (private/public recycling centers or transfer stations) in the 10-county region measures approximately 880 miles total. Remote drop offs get pulled with varying frequencies per county – some every day, every other day, some weekly, and some revolve from town to town. An in-depth analysis would be needed to determine the exact miles traveled of materials for one full revolution at the collection level but on average, if we assume drop offs are pulled 2.5 times per week, that equates to 2,200 miles traveled per week and 114,400 miles traveled annually at the collection level alone.

KEY FINDINGS - PROCESSING LEVEL

For the processing level of the material (i.e. distance traveled from public/private recycling centers to secondary processing facilities, larger MRFs, or end users), the data has a higher margin of error. Nevertheless, we analyzed the material flow of the entire regional processing level to arrive at a measurable figure for the region. The average length of a trip between their first stop at primary recycling centers or transfer stations and their second stop at larger MRFs, secondary processors, or end-users is 88 miles with a median distance of 73 miles.

• Avg collection distance 15.7 miles (one-way, from drop off or curbside to first destination)

• Avg processing distance 88 miles (one-way, from first destination to second)

Therefore, on average, residential recyclables collected in the region travel over 100 miles (103.5 mi.) to reach their secondary processing destinations. It should be noted here that many materials are then shipped to third destinations – the trip does not end at 100 miles, but our analysis of the data beyond the processing level was not possible.

KEY FINDINGS - MATERIAL FLOW SYSTEMS

Review of material flow systems as depicted in image below leads to the following

• Crawfordsville and Frankfort were found to have the most efficient municipal material flows depicted in "Model Circuit 1". This circuit shows the benefit of having a MRF-like private recycling center located directly in your city is that there are fewer transportation steps.

• Pulaski Co Recycling Center and White Co. Recycling Center were found to have the most efficient SWMD material circuits, shown by "Model Circuit 2". These two long-standing, successful county recycling centers in the region are large enough to process recovered material and ship certain commodities direct to vendors rather than to a transfer station then to a larger MRF. Warren County is also a great example but noted that their location makes it difficult to find efficient and cost-effective transportation of materials.

• Employing hub and spoke models, wherein single-stream/commingled materials are consolidated at a centrally located recycling center and sent to a distant MRF for further processing is a cost effective and efficient way to manage recycling. There are hub and spoke^[1] models in Montgomery, Warren, and Cass counties and to a lesser degree Tippecanoe and Carroll. Their manifestations are different but there is strong use of this model in the region.

^[1] Model wherein commingled materials are consolidated at a centrally located recycling center and sent to a distant MRF for further processing