STEP THREE:
Assemble Information

In this step you'll enter your data and start to interpret your results based on your initial audits. That being said, the more audits you complete, the more accurate your information will be. Ideally for schools, we suggest running the Station Audit in Step 2 for five school days and entering those results in as five seperate data points in the Resource Center.

Unlike most businesses, school Recycling programs mostly run on a Monday to Friday basis, so unless you have a major weekend event planned, the five week days should be enough to accurately gather data.

Upon completion of Step 2: Conduct a Recycling & Waste Audit, you should have a large filing of Composition Audit data from your Composition Audit Template PDF, as well as, Station Audit data from your Station Audit Template PDF. This data is your golden ticket to towards a world-renowned #zerowaste program.

Moving forward, you do not have to be the only one entering data into the Resource Center. We suggest setting up Resource Center User Roles at this time. User roles allow the Administrator (whoever set up the account) to give access to certain sections of the Resource Center with specific role abilities. For example, the Editor user role will allow that individual to enter daily Station Audit Data, but it will not allow them to change the Stream Compositions, Material Values, etc.

It's time to get all of that glorious data into the Resource Center so it can display your results and begin to simplify what the data says about your program.

The Enter Data section of the Resource Center on the Dashboard allows you to enter data based on Actual Weight, Volume to Weight or Capacity Estimate. To make things simple, we've recommended starting with a Capacity Estimate, but as your program grows you will be prompted to switch to Actual Weight for the most accurate results.

So let's get to it! Make sure you've collected all of your Composition Audit and Station Audit data and have it handy to transfer from your templates to your Resource Center account.

First things first, you have to enter in your Composition Audit data. This will change the Resource Center default compositions to the compositions that you've unearthed during your audit. Right now, there isn't much standardization from county to county when it comes to Refuse collection (but we're going to fix that together, aren't we?), so using the data you've collected will help to make your calculations more accurate.

After you've updated your Composition calculations, it's time to enter your next Station Audit data point, which will populate the second data point on your Dashboard (the first being from your pre-audit).

If you've completed more than one daily audit and have that data handy, first off, give yourself and your team a firm pat on the back and then enter in that data as well, as a seperate data point entry for each subsequent daily audit.

Once you've finished entering all of your data, it's time to head over to the Dashboard and take a first gander at all of your transformed information!

We highly recommend sending an Awareness Survey to a good cross-section of users to get an understanding of what your students & staff already know, what confuses them and what would help to make this program a success in their eyes.

Once you have the answers from your survey, you should be determining the best way to use the results to have a program in terms of education, usage and bin placement. It should provide insights as to what your problem areas are from the user's perspective which will allow you to combat those issues moving forward.

If a common theme discovered from conducting this survey is that people don't know which bin they should place their Glass Bottles in, perhaps you should consider including signage and/or labelling that specifically designates that item.

Something that may be discovered once you've conducted the survey is that students or staff in a certain area don't know where their centralized Recycling station is located making it difficult for them to Recycle their items. This would indicate to your team that they need a station that is more prominently displayed, or educational materials to show them where the nearest station is located.

Regardless of the feedback you receive, conducting this survey will give you valuable insights that will let you check on the current status of your program from the user's perspective.

Send this survey out to a cross-section of your users including your students and staff. You may want to conduct division-specific surveys that you send to users who spend the majority of their time in that division, or you may want to send the standard survey out to all users, or both. Information is your friend!

When determining how many Streams you will need, what can be Recycled, how much it will cost, and when/where collection will take place, your best resource is the organization that will be working with you to make sure your needs are met - your Waste Collection Service Provider, or your Hauler.