NRRA Member and Staff Teach Beyond the Curb: Recycling 101 Course

Marc Morgan, Solid Waste Manager for the City of Lebanon and Member of NRRA, is helping to demystify recycling as part of the Beyond the Curb: Recycling 101 course at the Osher Life-Long Learning Institute at Dartmouth. Virtual classes included talking about the global impacts of recycling, contamination, emerging technologies and more. Classes were taught by NRRA's Executive Director, Reagan Bissonnette, on recycling markets, and by Member Services Representative, Heather Herring, on behavior change and recycling. This engaged group of NH and VT residents had thoughtful questions for the presenters with a lively dialogue that they can bring to their towns and on their recycling journeys.

For example, in the class on behavior change, Heather asked why some recycling facilities are welcoming, engaged social places with signs and gardens and informed residents while other facilities are less welcoming where both staff and residents are defensive, tense, and frustrated. We talked about what motivations, opportunities, and capabilities we have to make small changes in our recycling behavior. We shared exemplars of RecycleSmartMA  that uses social media and ecomaine that experimented with a recycling cart check program run by interns to help modify their resident's behavior and reduce contamination in their towns.

Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI) offer noncredit courses with no assignments or grades to adults over age 50. Since 2001, the Bernard Osher Foundation has provided grants to launch OLLI programs at 120 universities and colleges throughout the United States.