Pinellas County Solid Waste (PCSW) manages the county’s landfill, numerous recycling programs, and one of the largest Waste-to-Energy (WTE) facilities in the United States. Improper consumer actions stemming from misinformation and a lack of knowledge have been a challenge to the recycling industry.
HCP Associates worked with PCSW leadership and staff to understand current outreach and educational initiatives, ongoing services, and programs. This led to the creation and implementation of the Pinellas County Residential Recycling Awareness Survey.
Starting in 2020, the survey leveraged a telephonic methodology to reach a representative sample of 800 Pinellas County residents. The results measured recycling participation, motivating and demotivating factors, and identified practices that are contributing to improper recycling, enabling PCSW to tailor its outreach to maximize recycling participation and minimize improper recycling habits.
A Follow-up study was conducted in 2024 to measure changes in participation, practices, and awareness while also allowing PCSW to explore other topics of interest. Another iteration of the Pinellas County Residential Recycling Awareness Survey will be completed in 2026.
In 2024, 96% of single-family residents participated in curbside recycling. For those living in a multifamily residence, 69% cited that their complex offered recycling. Of that percentage, 95% participated in recycling. Regardless of the type of dwelling respondents live in, the reasons for recycling are the same: to protect the earth, because it is the right thing to do, and to reduce what is going into the landfill. Across both subsets, there were about 1 in 10 who were recycling an item even if they were unsure if it was recyclable or not.
Ultimately, a large portion of Pinellas County residents are eager to recycle. However, opportunities remain for more residents to recycle and for them to recycle the correct items. Primary recommendations extracted from data and analysis are: to increase community engagement with recycling, encourage multifamily housing to offer recycling services to their residents, and articulate the state of the landfill and potential policy actions to meet the Department’s Zero Waste to Landfill goal.