Joseph ButeauDaniel Marks

Introduction: For our survey, we wanted to find out about people’s

recycling habits. We used esurveypro.com and Facebook to send our survey out to 200+ individuals, almost all of whom are high school or college students living in New England. This means that our focus changed from the habits of the general population to the habits of young adults in New England.

Questions: To learn about the recycling habits of our peers, we asked

the following questions.

 1. Do you know the meaning of the term "recycle"?2. Do you recycle?3. If so, why?4. If not, why don’t you?5. Do you think you should recycle?6. What kind of materials do you recycle?7. In what ways do you recycle?8. Are you paid or compensated in any way for recycling?9. How much time a week do you devote each week to recycling?

Data: In order to make our data easier to interpret, we took the

numbers we collected and made them into simple pie charts or bar graphs.

Do you know the meaning of the term “recycle”?

Do you recycle?

If so, why?

If not, why not?

Do you think you should recycle?

In what ways do you recycle?

What kinds of materials do you recycle?

Are you paid or compensated for recycling?

How many hours per week do you devote to recycling?

Conclusions:Based on the results of our survey, we came to the following conclusions:

•Young people in New England are recycling. They are doing so by utilizing public recycling receptacles and by recycling goods used at home. Those who do recycle are doing so because it is relatively convenient for them and because they have a genuine concern for the well-being of the environment. Things that are “easier” to recycle are recycled more often than items such as electronics or garments, probably because recycling glass/plastic/paper requires that one simply tosses them in the right bucket.

• Young people who aren’t recycling claim that it is either a) extremely inconvenient or b) that they don’t have access to recycling bins/centers. Obviously, these two go hand in hand, but it since recycling bins are everywhere, one could surmise that these people didn’t want to admit either to us or themselves that they are apathetic.

Finally, nearly everyone who took our survey said they knew they should be recycling, and also told us that they spent about 1-3 hours recycling each week. This suggests that young people in New England, for the most part, are aware of the negative impact of not recycling, and are willing to devout an hour or two of their time each week to do small things like throwing water bottles into the right bins while on campus, trading clothes that no longer fit, or sorting out glass and plastic on garbage day.

Regrets/ Changes Our primary regret was not picking the brains more of the

people who didn’t recycle. It was pretty shocking to see that even five people claimed to not know what recycling actually meant, and we thought that finding out more about the reasons why people don’t recycle might offer some insight as to how to persuade them to do so.