St. George Sustainability- Low Waste

I have lived in St. George for about a year now and from what I can tell we are very behind in the going green attitude that some cities have adopted.  Like for instance my hometown Portland, Oregon is one of the greenest cities in America, so you could imagine my shock when I come to St. George and realizing that there isn't recycling bins at every corner or seeing multicolored bins parked out on the curbs of each resident. When researching to find out about the steps St. George is taking to reduce their waste and any initiatives to becoming a greener city, I had an extremely difficult time. The best I could find was on the city of St. George website, where there was a little blurb about a pretty much nonexistent program called Don't Waste Dixie which aims to keep the public informed about ways to keep Washington county beautiful by anti litter campaigns and recycling. Their supposed efforts I haven't witnessed, but hey at least they're addressing it.

womp, womp.....On the other hand  Portland is making wonderful strides in trying to make their city as sustainable as possible. Portland had a whole website attributed to just garbage and recycling, they had links showing pick up schedules, pamphlets about tips on what to recycle etc. Outside of every home on Tuesday night there is a yellow, a blue and a green recycling bin. Portland has eliminated their use of plastic bags. We have made recycling a little bit more effective by separating compost from the hazardous and non recyclable materials. Portland even gives away $100 cash reward to those who sign up to receive their emails. I think St. George could learn a lot from a city like Portland. What we could start with is maybe awareness and getting people to care about taking care of their city. On a social media note, there could also maybe be an app that could give St. George residents the proper knowledge about recycling and maybe start with some incentives. Our group came up with the idea to possibly link it to the VW Fun Theory in which people invent fun ways to perform certain tasks and see if it affects peoples behaviors for the better. They did one where they put this bottle bank in the street and turned it into a arcade game, and it influenced more people to recycle than ever before. Here is the video.