Community Outreach and Engagement
​in Richmond

Client: R3 Consulting Group and the City of Richmond
Date: ​2023

Project Overview:
Envirolutions was hired as a subcontractor to R3 to work in collaboration with the City of Richmond to develop and facilitate an inclusive, innovative, and accessible multilingual community engagement process for the Richmond community to assess levels of access to programs, desires for additional services, and satisfaction with the performance of the current waste hauler. Envirolutions assisted in designing a 50-question survey which was translated into Spanish and Chinese. The survey asked a variety of questions about waste and recycling programs and practices, awareness of Senate Bill (SB) 1383, utilization of existing programs, awareness of the City’s zero waste goals, and a wish list for any additional programs and services.

In addition to administering the surveys, Envirolutions hosted community meetings, workshops and conducted stakeholder interviews with local organizations and community leaders. The workshops were informed by trends from the survey responses but differed in approach to inspire increased dialogue and engagement. Stakeholder interviews utilized open-ended questions allowing participants to speak freely about their perspectives.

Project Results:
During the project, we found that nearly half of all respondents said they were participating in composting programs.  Survey results showed that overall, 49% of residents composted yard waste, and surprisingly, more respondents said they composted food waste, 53%, and nearly 40% reported they composted food soiled paper.  When we separate out the English-speaking survey responses from the Spanish-speaking survey responses, we found some slight differences.

During our workshop, questions about organics program participation were asked differently. Participants were asked to report if they had a green cart and whether or not they used it. Among all respondents, 86% reported they had a green cart and used it, and 7% said they did not have access to a green cart. No respondents said they had a green cart but did not use it and the remaining participants declined to answer this question. A few individuals living in multi-family dwellings said their green cart was not accessible or missing. The likelihood that respondents would be living in multifamily dwellings was higher among the Spanish-speaking workshop participants than their English-speaking counterparts. Only 12% of English-speaking respondents reported living in multi-family dwellings compared to almost 29% of Spanish-speaking respondents. Independent of this, a strong majority of the Spanish-speaking respondents reported they had a green cart and used it - 81% of all workshop participants.*

*For additional information about the results, feel free to request via email.

Project Design:
With input from R3 and City of Richmond staff, Envirolutions designed a 50-question survey that was disseminated via social media and at community engagement events throughout the City of Richmond. The survey was administered through SurveyMonkey and those who lacked access to computers or less tech savvy users, printed copies of the survey were provided. Questions were mostly multiple-choice with some qualitative fill-in-the-blank questions where appropriate.

The survey was translated into Chinese and Spanish to increase accessibility and efforts were made to ensure it was only distributed to people who lived and/or worked in Richmond. To incentivize participation, participants were entered into a raffle for a $50 gift card. At survey end, 15 respondents who provided their email address for the raffle, were chosen at random by the Envirolutions team.  At Survey close, we received 413 responses in English, 49 in Spanish, and 3 in Chinese.
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The scope of our project also included presentations at community meetings hosted by or for civic organizations, faith-based organizations, cultural affinity groups, unions, business groups and/or trade organizations. In order to provide maximum access, some of the community meetings were held virtually and others were held in-person. In total, Envirolutions was able to host 8 Community Meetings.

Envirolutions was tasked with convening three community workshops that differed from the community meetings in length and content. The purpose of the workshops was to cultivate more feedback from the community in a less formal, more conversational format. In total, we were able to host five. The community workshops were informed by the findings from the survey and previous community engagement. All workshops were held in English and Spanish.

Additionally, Envirolutions tabled and conducted surveys at three City-based events: the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, Earth Day, and Cinco de Mayo.  The team hosted a table with information about the survey and background on the project. In addition to conducting surveys, our team designed and utilized a magnet board highlighting the 5 top areas of interest or concern to constituents, as borne out by survey responses to date, and asked visitors to note the topic that most resonated with their experience relative to solid waste in Richmond.  This served as a conversation starter and helped attract and engage eventgoers with the community engagement process.

Envirolutions was contracted to conduct up to 10 individual stakeholder engagement interviews.