Examining the Influence of Efficacy Beliefs on Participation in a Residential Curbside Recycling Scheme: Implications for the Use of Persuasive Messaging to Promote Sustainable Behaviours

This thesis examines participation in a household curbside recycling scheme and the influence that beliefs around the consequences of this behaviour have on participation. Using the Fishbein and Ajzen’s (2010) Reasoned Action Approach to create a model of the factors influencing behaviour, quantitative data are collected examining a variety of beliefs around the advantages and disadvantages of participation. Economic beliefs negatively correlate with behaviour while beliefs about reducing waste to landfill and preserving natural resources positively correlate with behaviour. A discussion of Ontario’s current recycling framework is also included and suggestions on areas for improvement are put forward.

Examining the Influence of Efficacy Beliefs on Participation in a Residential Curbside Recycling Scheme: Implications for the Use of Persuasive Messaging to Promote Sustainable Behaviours

This thesis examines participation in a household curbside recycling scheme and the influence that beliefs around the consequences of this behaviour have on participation. Using the Fishbein and Ajzen’s (2010) Reasoned Action Approach to create a model of the factors influencing behaviour, quantitative data are collected examining a variety of beliefs around the advantages and disadvantages of participation. Economic beliefs negatively correlate with behaviour while beliefs about reducing waste to landfill and preserving natural resources positively correlate with behaviour. A discussion of Ontario’s current recycling framework is also included and suggestions on areas for improvement are put forward.

Chemical Recycling of Polystyrene with Tertiary Amine Switchable Hydrophilicity Solvents

Nearly 40 metric tonnes of expanded polystyrene (XPS) waste is collected through Kingston’s curbside recycling program annually before being outsourced to companies with the means to recycle it. However, transporting XPS foam products is not economically viable. Therefore, a significant challenge is finding an efficient way to reduce the volume of the XPS foam prior to transportation since it has a very low density, consisting of up to 98% air. Currently, XPS products are compacted physically which requires the use of expensive compactors and energy-intensive compression processes. In 2011, Jessop et al. demonstrated that N,N-dimethylcyclohexylamine (DMCHA), a solvent with relatively low toxicity and volatility, can be used to recycle XPS using a greener approach. DMCHA is relatively hydrophobic under neutral conditions (e.g., in water), but becomes more hydrophilic when exposed to carbonated water (CO2 dissolves in water, forming carbonic acid which protonates the DMCHA). I have worked on optimizing this process via the following steps. Firstly, the XPS is dissolved in a small volume of DMCHA in its hydrophobic, neutral form. Then, the PS-DMCHA mixture is added to carbonated water causing the DMCHA to become hydrophilic and to dissolve in the aqueous solution, resulting in a layer of PS on the surface. The PS can then be easily collected and air-dried. By adding a 30 wt.% PS/DMCHA solution to carbonated water at 60oC, I have been able to achieve a typical purity of 95 wt.% of the final XPS (i.e., 5 wt% of DMCHA remains in the XPS), determined by 1H NMR.

The American Beverage Industry and the Development of Curbside Recycling Programs, 1950–2000

Many people today consider curbside recycling the quintessential model of eco-stewardship, yet this waste-management system in the United States was in many ways a pollutersponsored initiative that allowed corporations to expand their productive capacity without fixing fundamental flaws in their packaging technology. For the soft-drink, brewing, and canning industries, the promise of recycling became a powerful weapon for combating mandatory deposit bills and other source-reduction measures in the 1970s and 1980s. In examining the nexus of business, envirotech, and political history, this article explores how American corporations enrolled government agencies to construct resource reclamation systems in the United States that became models for waste management programs in municipalities around the world.