Happy Earth Day! 🌎
Presenting recycling data in a visually impactful way is critical to getting people excited to reduce, reuse, repurpose, and recycle!
At an Earth Day fair over the weekend, I was thrilled to see that my favorite thrift store had an exhibition table. They were educating the public about what donations they can and cannot accept, complete with examples, and how they dispose of unsellable donations. As a non-profit that gives 100% of its revenue back to the community in grants, selling recyclable materials and minimizing dumpster fees is an important part of its financials.
I was surprised to learn they recycle so much! I assumed they threw rejected items in their dumpster, but by partnering with our county recycling agency they've been able to generate additional revenue and keep a lot out of the landFULL.
While this hot pink poster was eye-catching, there were much better ways to convey their awesome recycling stats.
Given the visual nature of the Earth Day fair, I would have created a dramatic analog visualization with a physical pile of each item where 1 shoe = 100 lbs of shoes, 1 box = 100 lbs of cardboard, 1 trash bag = 100 lbs to the landfill, et cetera. That would have been very intriguing and impactful in the context of the fair with lots of people milling about and visiting the various tables.
👕👕👕👕👕👕👕👕
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📰 📰 📰
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Since I do not have that much trash lying around my house, and am limited to the dimensions of a laptop screen... I whipped up the following viz improvements in Excel in about 10 minutes. Yes, you can make impactful visualizations in Excel! Are there things I would change or fiddle with each of these graphs? You bet! But you get the idea. A "simple" Excel graph, done right, can tell a great story!
Which do you like better? Answer by clicking your selection(s) in the poll below!
Which viz do you like better?
Bar Chart
Pie Chart
Physical Representation
You can vote for more than one answer.
I am constantly looking for and making small changes to live more sustainably. It's about progress, not perfection! Knowing that my favorite local thrift has the infrastructure to recycle certain items, and make money doing so, will cause me to donate even more. I'm already shopping to the max! Yay for keeping things out of the landFULL!
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