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America Got Schooled: Nearly Half of Consumers Fail Recycling Quiz
It’s not just the kids who need to head back to school this season. While 88% of Americans agree recycling is important, nearly half failed a basic recycling quiz and only 4% received an A, according to a new survey by Republic Services.Byline: BTB Editor
July 22, 2019 / Time to read: 5 minApparently it’s not just the kids who need to head back to school this season. While 88% of Americans agree recycling is important, nearly half failed a basic recycling quiz and only 4% received an A, according to a new survey by Republic Services.
Recycling isn’t geometry, but when it comes to knowing what to throw in the container, most Americans need to do some homework, according to the survey. The majority of respondents (69%) gave themselves an A or B for their knowledge of what can or cannot be recycled, but only 26% actually scored an A or B.
Perhaps the biggest misconception of all? 54% of Americans believe that all items marked with a recycling symbol can go in their curbside recycling container.
"Most consumers care about the environment and want to recycle – but many of them are genuinely unsure about how and what to recycle,” says Pete Keller, vice president of recycling and sustainability for Republic Services. “About one-third of what people put in their recycling containers doesn’t belong there.”
Common items like garden hoses, yard debris and disposable diapers are trash and belong in the waste container, Keller says.
When it came to selecting non-recyclable items, survey respondents overwhelming gave wrong answers:
- 65% thought plastic grocery bags could be recycled curbside;
- 53% believed aluminum foil is recyclable; and
- 41% picked clothing as a recycling container item.
What you put in your recycling container is more important than how much you put in there. You can become an A student in recycling by following the rule “when in doubt, throw it out” and sticking to these three categories of materials:
- Paper and cardboard
- Metal or aluminum cans
- Plastic bottles and jugs
Republic Services launched
About the Research
The Recycling “Report Card” Survey was conducted online on behalf of Republic Services from June 17-19, 2019. A nationally representative sample of 1,048 respondents from the US were interviewed. The margin of error on these results is +/- 3 percentage points (based on a confidence interval of 95%).
