What is meant by ‘participation’?
For a household to be defined as a participant, it must set out its recycling or composting at least once in a defined period. This period should normally be three consecutive collection opportunities. This applies regardless of whether the collection frequency is weekly, fortnightly or monthly, although for monthly collections it may be necessary to reduce this to two collection opportunities purely because waiting for three months for monitoring data may be too long. There is no need to monitor weekly collections four times as is sometimes recommended; three times is enough.
Participation is not the same as ‘set out’, a term which is also commonly used in relation to monitoring kerbside schemes.
SET OUT RATE Set out rate is the proportion of households that put out recycling or composting on one collection opportunity. This is a valuable measure because it can be used to assess vehicle utilisation and inform the planning of collection rounds. Set out rate is normally calculated for each of the three occasions that monitoring takes place and an average taken.
| Number of containers placed out for collection on a given day |
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x |
100 |
| Number of household provided with the service |
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PARTICIPATION RATE
Participation rate is the proportion of households that take part at least once in the defined period. This is a valuable measure because it allows you to assess the extent to which the scheme is being used; this can be used to devise communications campaigns, for example. Participation rate is calculated over three collection opportunities because many households don’t put out their container each time, normally because it either isn’t full or they forget.
| Number of households putting out their container at least once in a defined period |
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| ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
x |
100 |
| Number of household provided with the service |
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