One of life's persistent questions, in Princeton or anywhere else, has been how to improve recycling in public spaces. I used to write critiques of recycling arrangements wherever encountered, whether here, in airports, or in travels around the world. One of the posts, Ten Tips for Improving Recycling in Your Workplace, speaks to the importance of pairing trash and recycling containers, and making sure they contrast visually.
This very simple retrofit, initiated by the Princeton Borough parks department probably ten years ago, is a good example of how easy and inexpensive it can be to add a recycling container to an existing trash can. The bucket used to have a recycling sign on it, contrasts visually, and is simply hung on the trash receptacle to provide park users with a clear choice. Though it may not be the most attractive setup, this combo has survived years of use, and works much better than sleek, high-priced combo containers that often put appearance ahead of functionality, confusing users by giving very little visual contrast between the recycling and trash receptacles.
Of course, the high degree of separation of trash and recyclables that this simple retrofit achieves is only one step in getting the bottles, cans, etc. actually recycled. The next step is for the park custodial crew to actually keep the recyclables separate from the trash when they empty the containers. As the Ten Tips post explains, anyone wishing to determine whether recycling is actually happening at their workplace, school, parks or elsewhere, needs to track each step along the way to the recycling facility.
An empty bottle, then, is a bit like a salmon swimming upstream, having to negotiate many obstacles along the way, any one of which could prevent it from reaching that place where new bottles can be born. Thanks to this simple retrofit in one of Princeton's parks, a lot of bottles and other recyclables have made it past one of the major obstacles along that path to recycling.
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