{"id":7699,"date":"2022-05-16T12:30:07","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T19:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/blog\/blog-talking-trash-with-tim-every-day-is-a-bones-day-for-minnesota-recycling-manager\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T14:45:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T18:45:58","slug":"blog-talking-trash-with-tim-every-day-is-a-bones-day-for-minnesota-recycling-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/en_gb\/blog\/blog-talking-trash-with-tim-every-day-is-a-bones-day-for-minnesota-recycling-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking Trash With Tim: Every Day is a \u2018Bones Day\u2019 For Minnesota Recycling Manager"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>It&#8217;s American Public Works Week, and we&#8217;re celebrating public works leaders in solid waste on our blog. Check back for a new profile feature each day!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From managing a recycling program for about 45,000 households and fielding phone calls, to organizing and overseeing special drop-off events and meeting with four city councils, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brooklynpark.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brooklyn Park, MN<\/a>, Recycling Manager Tim Pratt\u2019s work is never done.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt keeps me out of trouble,\u201d he quips.<\/p>\n<p>As a leader in public works, Pratt exemplifies the qualities of readiness and resilience that the <a href=\"https:\/\/npww.apwa.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">American Public Works Association<\/a> celebrates this week \u2014 May 15-21. He holds a bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degree in broadcast journalism, and he spent 10 years in the field before transitioning into communications and recycling coordination for the City of Roseville, MN. There, he won an Emmy for the video \u201cBoxes, Bottles, &amp; Banana Peels: A Guide to School Recycling.\u201d<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0vKAA4LodPo\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe>\n<p>Pratt then ran his own environmental communications consulting firm for several years before joining the team in Brooklyn Park in July 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout his career, Pratt has honed the skills and gained the experience he needs to expertly navigate busy days, myriad tasks and the ever-changing needs of a diverse, growing community.<\/p>\n<p>Though Pratt has a liberal arts background, he comes from a family of scientists. His father was a botany professor and his family had a hobby farm,\u00a0 \u201cso I grew up kind of in an environmental family,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI saw these natural processes of things changing into other things,\u201d from manure plowed into fields to become fertilizer and beyond. But when it came to recycling, he says, \u201cI didn&#8217;t know really much of anything about it other than I recycled. \u2026 I had to learn a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He also had much to learn about the ever-changing population in Brooklyn Park, which is a \u201ctremendously, wonderful diverse city,\u201d Pratt says. There, some 20% of people were born in another country, and some 25% of people speak a language other than English at home, he says.<\/p>\n<p>Pratt realized that to successfully serve the community, he needed to shift his way of thinking because everything he may assume about recycling and how to recycle are not necessarily the assumptions everyone makes. At the same time, his background in journalism and adapting communications to reach people from all walks of life helped to position him for the work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have a unique skill set in this industry,\u201d Pratt says. \u201cI&#8217;m uniquely skilled at knowing how to talk trash.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><b>Getting out into the community<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>To better reach the people he serves, he knew he had to get out into the community, meet people and talk with them about their needs. To do so, he tapped into his curious nature, passion for helping others, and his desire to simply figure things out \u2014 all traits and skills that served him well during his days as a journalist.<\/p>\n<p>Pratt uses a great analogy to describe how to successfully communicate with others. When you&#8217;re in school and conveying your ideas in the classroom, you do so through research and citations. But in the real world, if you offer citations during conversations, people will \u201clook at you funny.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Instead, you have to figure out how to put what you\u2019re saying \u201cinto terms that people can relate to,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>A task that becomes increasingly difficult when the people you serve speak a variety of languages.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing on census data, Pratt and his team gained insight into who their customers are and the languages they speak. To align with that information, the city designed recycling education materials to include English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Hmong, and used images to better convey information, too.<\/p>\n<p>Pratt spoke with the Multicultural Advisory Committee in Brooklyn Park and the nearby Brooklyn Center, and after some tweaks, they signed off on the materials.<\/p>\n<p>Pratt also relies on language-inclusive <a href=\"https:\/\/routeware.com\/solutions\/\">digital tools for recycling<\/a>, powered by <a href=\"https:\/\/routeware.com\/solutions\/customer-operations\/customer-education-outreach\/\">ReCollect<\/a>, to convey information to the community. The tools are created in English, and an automated process translates any given city or organization\u2019s recycling and solid waste information into 15 languages, including Spanish, German and more.<\/p>\n<p>For other outreach efforts, Pratt says he and his team found common ground with the community: jobs. He found that economic activity, jobs related to solid waste and recycling, as well as items that are commonly made from recycled materials \u201care things that kind of cross that boundary (and) resonate with folks,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<h3><b>From tech to Tik-Tok: Staying ahead of the curve<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>But the evolution of communications and strategies to reach everyone in the community didn\u2019t stop there. It\u2019s also imperative that his work incorporates of-the-moment changes in recycling, such as the boom in online ordering, and the resulting onslaught of cardboard boxes, during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s kind of like thinking of yourself as a lifelong learner,\u201d Pratt says. \u201cJust because you got your degree and you&#8217;re now out in the working world, you don&#8217;t stop reading; you don&#8217;t stop learning; you don&#8217;t stop seeing new things and new possibilities,\u201d he says. \u201cYou gotta keep yourself open to that and to be able to pivot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another skillset he perfected during his time in journalism, which has become increasingly important while dealing with another ever-changing factor: technology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe challenge to me with technology is figuring out where people are and then figuring out how to use that technology to meet people where they&#8217;re at,\u201d Pratt says. Lately, the popular app has been TikTok, a short video-focused social media platform.<\/p>\n<p>One of Pratt\u2019s favorite accounts to follow on the app is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QLsnGBG2_eA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jonathan Graziano<\/a> and his senior pug, Noodle. If Noodle stands in Jonathan\u2019s videos, it\u2019s a \u201cbones day,\u201d Pratt says, which means Noodle is ready to seize the day. If Noodle lays or sits, Pratt says, it&#8217;s a \u201cno bones day,\u201d and it\u2019s time for self-care.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s absolutely heartwarming and hysterical,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Pratt\u2019s willingness to adapt, drive to help others and passion for learning has served him and his community well in the past, and they will only continue in the future, ensuring many \u201cbones days\u201d to come.<\/p>\n<h3><b>To the future and beyond<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>Pratt says a county-wide initiative is now focusing on organics recycling, so Brooklyn Park has been rolling out programs to offer curbside collection.<\/p>\n<p>Pratt is also working on an organics drop-off site, which he is eager to get up and running.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou get drawn to government work because you want to help people,\u201d he says. \u201cI like the challenge and I like, at the end, being able to give some useful information to somebody that they can use to make their life better.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><b>Learn more<\/b>.<\/h3>\n<p>If you\u2019re a solid waste leader looking to up your organization\u2019s readiness and resilience, our best-in-class technology solutions can help. <a href=\"https:\/\/routeware.com\/get-started\/\">Let\u2019s talk!<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s American Public Works Week, and we&#8217;re celebrating public works leaders in solid waste on our blog. Check back for a new profile feature each day! From managing a recycling program for about 45,000 households and fielding phone calls, to organizing and overseeing special drop-off events and meeting with four city councils, Brooklyn Park, MN, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","resourcetype-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/routeware.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}