Tacoma Recycles Right
The Recycling Partnership and City of Tacoma

As the City of Tacoma’s Environmental Services team kicked off a new multifamily recycling program, they were faced with the challenge of how to effectively inspire behavior change amongst their diverse multilingual population. Residents had complained that in addition to infrastructure challenges to recycling, the informational materials they had received were “offensive,” poorly translated, and inaccessible. InterEthnica conducted focus groups and interviews in English, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, and Khmer to test materials, recycling behaviors, and solid waste perspectives, utilizing the insights to transcreate and redesign more than 20 multilingual assets for accuracy and cultural resonance. Residents and property managers lauded the usability of the revised materials and credited them for reinforcing their recycling behavior.