Eugene residents like their garbage, recycling, and yard debris services and believe recycling is a high priority, according to results of a survey conducted this fall. Every three years, the City of Eugene’s Waste Prevention Program conducts a residential solid waste and recycling satisfaction survey to understand perceptions of these local services. This year, a total of 402 residential customers living within Eugene city limits participated in the telephone survey, which was conducted by Advanced Marketing Research, a local research firm.
Highlights from the survey include:
• Customer satisfaction with garbage, recycling, and yard debris service remains high in the community, with an average score of 4.5 on a scale of one to five.
• Recycling collection also continues to be “very” important to Eugene residents with a score of 4.7 on a scale of one to five.
• Forty-two percent of customers report that they are currently composting at home. Of those who compost, 78% compost food waste, 72% compost grass, and 68% compost non-grass yard debris.
• Over half (54%) of all customers report they would be willing to separate food waste from trash for collection by their trash hauler. If they knew that nearly 20% of everything thrown away in
Eugene is food waste, an additional 8% would separate food waste for their hauler.
Even with the high level of home composting in Eugene, over 20,000 tons of food waste goes to the landfill each year. These survey results indicate that curbside collection programs are popular and might be able to successfully redirect this material away from the landfill and into a positive economic use.
The full report, it is available on the City’s website at www.eugene-or.gov/eugenerecycles The City of Eugene’s Waste Prevention and Green Building program provides education, technical assistance, and incentives to Eugene businesses, residents, and community partners.