Back to Community Insights

Combatting green waste recycling confusion

Sacramento County residents were confused about what recyclables could be placed in the curbside recycling cart. To add to the confusion, the SacGreenTeam’s curbside customers will be required to put organic material into their green waste cart instead of their trash cart. We needed a way to combat "wishcyling."

Approach

To make behavior change stick, we didn’t just tell people what to do—we helped them see themselves as part of a community already doing it.

Using Social Norm Marketing, we built a campaign around two key behavioral strategies:

Static norms: Reinforcing the idea that most people are already doing the right thing—composting, sorting waste properly, and using their green carts as intended.
Dynamic norms: Highlighting growing momentum and shifts—so even if someone’s not doing it yet, they feel like they’re catching up to their peers, not acting alone.

Our outreach was multilingual and multicultural, with messaging deployed in English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese to reflect the diversity of the county’s communities. Materials were placed where people live, work, and gather—from digital platforms to community centers.

Impact

21,000 residents visited the RecycleReboot.com campaign website to get practical tips, visuals, and downloadable guides.
80% of those visitors were new users, showing we successfully reached outside the usual information bubble.
That’s about 15% of all SacGreenTeam customers—a strong early adoption rate for a community-wide behavior shift.

The result?

A clearer path for residents, less contamination in recycling bins, and a big step toward statewide organics recycling goals—made possible by meeting people where they are and showing them they’re not alone in making this change.