Have you recently gotten a gold star on your recycling bin?  Perhaps a message about keeping plastic bags out?  Or keeping glass on the side?  In an effort to address recycling practices with "point of activity" messaging, Metro launched a "Leave Behind" messaging program with colorful tags.  It's working.

Field research assistants go out early in the morning and visually inspect recycling bins along specified routes.  If the recycling is set out perfectly, the resident gets a gold star (actually, it's green with gold stars).  If the recycling bin has plastic bags or glass bottles (plastic bags and glass bottles are big no-no's in Portland's comingled recycling stream because they jam up the processing machinery), the team leaves behind an educational tag.


The interesting part about this program is that it looks like it's working.  They're measuring it.  That is, the field staff go back to the same route the following week and see if people responded to the message.  For example, if someone put plastic bags in their bin one week, got a colorful educational message saying, "No Plastic Bags", and then the same household didn't put plastic bags in the following week, that would count as successful messaging.  The team has seen lots of households change their behavior after leaving just one message. 

This project reaffirms my suspicion that people generally want to do the right thing, they just don't always know what that entails.  Instead of television commercials or radio ads, this simple messaging strategy lets people know what to do... where they do it.  I hope they come by my place; I want a gold star.