Method Recycling Bin Signs

81 per cent of Australians admitted that they aren’t confident that they’re recycling correctly in recent research by Pact Group. Further, even those who are comfortable with recycling said that if they were unsure about a material they’d throw it in the recycling bin anyway. Known as ‘wish cycling’ which has a number of issues for recycling.

It’s further complicated by the fact that recycling is different everywhere - what goes in your residential recycling bin may not go in your office bin and vice versa. This is further complicated when you have a transient location, with people visiting that may not know your requirements.

With all of this in mind, we believe that getting recycling right in your space takes a combination of signage and education.

There are a number of reasons why getting your recycling right is important:

1. Reducing contamination such as food or liquids getting on the recyclables, maintaining the quality of the materials and stops them from going to landfill. For example, paper is a fibre and every time it is recycled or gets wet the fibres degrade and become smaller, making the material a lower quality and unable to be recycled as many times.
   
2. As recycling becomes more of a social and financial issue, waste management companies are starting to phase in contamination fees. To avoid waste materials being sent in recycling bins and ensuring the materials are valuable enough to be recycled and sold.
   
3. Finally, to reduce the chance of foreign materials damaging the equipment in recycling centres such as smashed glass embedded into the paper. This can halt work for days and be costly to fix.

Method Recycling Signage

Method’s recycling bin signage focuses on ensuring that the user can take in the information quickly and clearly as not everyone is going to spend the time necessary to consider their options. This means we utilise colour coding, accessible succinct text with icons and ‘nos’ where relevant. Like No Coffee Cups on the paper bins - this one seems hardest to get right.

Vertical Recycling Signage

By far, we’ve seen the most success with signage at eye level with our Vertical Signage. Vertical Signage attaches to the back of Method’s 60L bins with the Method connectors. Being attached to the bins the signage looks clean, clear and consistent across your space.

Below is the recycling station set up by McConnell Dowell, a partner on the Western Program Alliance (WPA) Level Crossing Removal Project in Melbourne. A 5-bin station with custom vertical signage, a solution they intend on rolling out to the rest of their sites.

Within the first week of rolling out their 5-bin system, waste to landfill was reduced by approximately 80% and reduced their contamination to an incredible 2%.

Bin Stickers

Every space is different, so if you don’t have the wall space we also have Vinyl Bin Stickers that can be applied to the front of your bins to help users to separate their waste. These can also be used on the front of any built-in cupboard bins you may have, to ensure that the communication is consistent across your spaces. These have been popular in large facilities such as the Te Papa Museum in Wellington where space available may change depending on the exhibit.

Custom Recycling Streams

Flexibility and modularity are a core part of the Method philosophy, and the same applies to signage and the available streams. While our standards cover the majority of common streams in New Zealand, you can reduce your waste even further by collecting custom streams. From e-waste or batteries to bilingual - we’ve seen it all.

So we’ve made it easier to create your own streams to meet your recycling goals.

The Australian National Maritime Museum is a great example of this, they identified that their own brochures contributed to a significant amount of their waste. So we created a custom stream for them, with a custom coloured label and stream icon with the intention of re-using the brochures. Although, with COVID they switched to a light paper brochure and sent them off for recycling.

Whether your goal is to collect something a little different or to get people to separate their waste correctly we’ve got a solution - and we’d love to help.