Welcome to the 12 Days of Trash! To learn why Holiday Waste is such a problem, as well as how we solve it together, click to expand the drop-downs below or Get Started Now. 👇
Why is Holiday Waste such a problem? Here’s some quick facts:
The good news: 80% of holiday waste can be reused, re-purposed, or recycled.
The bad news: it often isn’t.
In our experience, people want to do the right thing, and they want to recycle properly. However, when they don’t know where to place items, and they can’t easily find the information, they often end up ‘wishcycling’ – which can be dangerous.
Items such as lights, tinsel, and other holiday ‘tanglers’ will wrap around the machinery at the recycling center, creating work stoppages, equipment failure, and potential harm to employees.
There are quite a few holiday items that either shouldn’t be in the recycling bin at all or require a little extra care before being placed in your bin – and when the holiday season comes to a close, quite a few of them will end up where they shouldn’t.
What’s more: weather delays due to snow, ice or wind; seasonal Interruptions due to public holidays; and special collections for things not usually collected year round all tend to only exacerbate the problem.
“Our print calendar doesn’t really tell residents that their collection is going to be pushed back one day after a holiday unless they read the tiny paragraph at the top. But nobody reads the paragraph.” – Jamie Shockley, Strategic Communications Analyst, City of Olathe
How do we fix this? Click on ‘The Solution’ to learn more.
P.S. Here’s some more not so fun facts about Holiday Waste.
♻️ If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet. If every American family wrapped just 3 presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. The 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high. If we each sent one card less, we’d save 50,000 cubic yards of paper.
To make your community better recyclers, you need to make recycling simple for them. Make communication and information access easy with Routeware.
Our suite of education, calendar, and customer portal (for bulky and special pickups, like Christmas Trees) tools are here to help you combat holiday waste. Reduce contamination, reduce illegal dumping, reduce phone calls, and simplify recycling & waste disposal for everyone – with the click of a button.
How our products help:
How do residents know what goes where? Some materials should go in the garbage, some in the green bin or compost, and some can be recycled. This is where the Waste Wizard comes in.
What happens when a public holiday, or a particularly nasty winter storm, changes the collection schedule? How do you get real-time notifications out to residents? Instantly notify individuals of upcoming collection days on their everyday devices, eliminating the need for paper reminders, with the Collection Calendar.
Enable self-service, automatically schedule service, bill the user, and prevent illegal dumping with our Service Requests tool.
For special collections/bulky pickups around christmas trees and other items, utilize our Customer Portal and our new Service Request tool.
Looking to remotely and passively teach your audience how to dispose of items properly, no matter their age? Then our Waste Sorting Game is for you.
Every tool, no matter the combination. Have it all, and reach people to engage and communicate no matter where they may be – with our Mobile App.
See our resources section below on more tips, tricks, and information on how to tackle Holiday Waste, and how we can help.
Hear from our customers:
“It’s having an impact on us institutionally because it’s relieving us of a great deal of work, whether that’s fielding phone calls, dealing with contamination issues after pickups, and more.” General Manager, Mike Csapo, The Resource Recovery and Recycling Authority of Southwest Oakland County
“I definitely would recommend the use of the system to any municipality – it’s affordable, as it depends on your size – having someone build you this from scratch would cost infinitely more. You get so much value out of it – I would highly recommend the [Routeware] system to anyone.” – Derek Ochej, Public Education and Promotion Coordinator at Public Works, City of Kingston
“Before we began using ReCollect, there was a lot of customer confusion regarding when their recycling would be picked up and what day their trash would be collected after a holiday. [They wanted] to know if their collection schedule is delayed, and ReCollect enables us to communicate with these residents as well—so that’s one feature we really like. So if trash collection is delayed for snow, for example, we can message that out immediately to our residents.” – Jamie Shockley, Strategic Communications Analyst, City of Olathe
“Number one [thing that’s nice about the Service Request tool] is that residents schedule their own collections online. They pick the day and time it’s going to be picked up…If they schedule a Friday pickup on Tuesday, and by Wednesday their item is already gone, they still get a reminder Thursday night asking if we should still pick it up or if they want to cancel. They realize we didn’t pick it up, they cancel, and it saves us a trip. It also leaves open a slot for someone else to get a pickup scheduled.” – Jim Reingruber, Assistant Director of Solid Waste Management for the City of Durham, NC
And hear from our end-users!
“Since I got it, we haven’t missed recycling once! Seriously, get it. You’ll wonder why you didn’t get it earlier.” – Richland County user
“I like having a reminder message the evening before, as I would previously, sometimes, forget. Now I never have to miss another debris pick up date or wonder which week it is, (garbage, recycles, yard debris, etc) since the schedule does vary. Also, it’s nice to be notified of any changes due to inclement weather and holiday schedules! Other info on the app is useful as well. Thank you!” – Vancouver user
“It’s especially great around holidays when I wonder how it will affect my collection, and vacations when it is easy to lose track of which week it is for recycling. Super focused app that does what nothing else does so simply.”
“So useful. I brag about that app to my friends from Montreal. It makes everything simple. Both in French and English language. Every city should do it like Kingston does it.” – Kingston user
“Love the reminders. We are old and forgetful – it is really a great service and lets us know we need to put the cans out. And which cans! Will be even more useful when we need to make the change to organics.” – Sacramento user
Additional resources to make your life easier, just in time for the holiday season.
Guides
Blogs
Videos
More (From Around the Web)