Managing household solid waste is a growing challenge for many cities. To tackle this problem, cities are turning to recycling, which is an effective tool for solid waste management. This research seeks to understand the public perceptions and practices of recycling in the City of Laramie, Wyoming. Recycling in Laramie began in 1983 with the establishment of the Ark Recycling Center. Laramie officially started its curbside recycling services in September 2011, and in April 2012 the city declared its long-term goal to achieve a 40% diversion rate by 2030. The study involved a mail-back survey to understand the public participation landscape and the factors affecting recycling behaviors and attitudes of residents in Laramie. The quantitative results of the survey responses were used to create a civic engagement score, a recycling importance score, and recycling satisfaction and recycling behavior scores to measure residents' perceptions of the recycling program. In addition, three key informant interviews were conducted to explore the efforts of the city, the University of Wyoming, and Ark Regional Services. The results show that more than 80% of the survey respondents indicated that environmental concern was the major motivation to recycle, which was related to a high level of recycling importance and satisfaction. The study further indicated that Laramie should develop an aggressive educational policy, incentive policies, and a Master Plan to encourage stronger public participation to meet its 40% waste diversion rate by 2030 goal.

Abstract:This study examined the effectiveness of environmental impact assessment (EIA) in landfill development projects for Kathmandu Valley municipalities in Nepal using a survey, focus group interviews, expert interviews, and observations. The study found that EIA reports are often prepared by incompetent contractors that are not accredited and the reports are poor in quality, too technical, mostly published in the English language, cluttered with irrelevant materials, too long, and frequently contain information copied from other documents. The survey results showed that 66% of the respondents were unaware of any public meetings conducted for EIA in the current landfill location, 69% of them were uninformed of any alternate landfill locations, 91% were unsatisfied with the governmental services provided, and only 14% were happy with the public participation conducted. Findings from other proposed landfill locations and an old landfill site corroborated that the government fell short in conducting EIA or upholding Nepal's environmental law, thus undercutting public support in such projects. In some cases, retroactive EIA was being conducted to create the appearance that the required procedures were followed, which clearly violated the spirit and elemental principle of the apparatus. In other cases, political parties endorsed EIA in place of public hearings. To rectify flaws in EIA and maintain quality and accepted rigor of EIA in solid waste management (SWM), it is suggested that Nepal devise EIA guidelines for the SWM sector that are more appropriate for local conditions, build institutional capacity, accredit EIA drafters, use alternate methods to notify people about proposed activities, and seek public participation and ownership in the project from the beginning.

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