Building on the success of 2014-2015 outreach at key Spanish-speaking events in Snohomish County, outreach events will take place in 2017 aimed at the Latino, Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese communities. Planning for this outreach took place in 2016, including developing a new interactive recycling game with better portability and multilingual capabilities than past booth activities. Snohomish County's 2017 events will be held at grocery stores specializing in Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese products. These venues were selected since they are popular destinations for the target audiences and provide locations suitable for winter events. H-Mart, a popular grocery store in the Korean community, and Ranch 99, a grocery store and restaurant frequented by the Chinese and Vietnamese communities, were selected as ideal venues.

Waste Management conducted targeted door-to-door outreach to multicultural multifamily properties (MMP) in Snohomish County in late 2015. The goal for this work was to better serve non-English speaking communities in Snohomish County and address language barriers that hamper effective recycling on multifamily properties.

Waste Management provided recycling information in eight languages and provided multilingual tote bags. In addition, waste audits of recycling and garbage containers were performed and new decals (which were both photo based and multilingual) were applied when appropriate. Multilingual staff went door-to-door at targeted properties to speak with residents about recycling and to distribute educational materials, including recycling tote bags. In total, outreach staff visited 29 properties and went door-to-door at 3,343 units. Residents and property managers reported appreciating the multilingual outreach, and were especially appreciative of the recycling tote bags.

For approximately 20 percent of all the residents that received door-to-door outreach, English was not their primary language. The outreach was delivered in seven languages, Amharic, Arabic, Korean, Somali, Spanish, Tigrigna and Vietnamese. A total of 13 languages were identified when going door-to-door including the seven languages mentioned before, as well as Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Hindi, Indonesian and Tagalog.

With more than 10 percent of the population in King County identifying as Hispanic/Latino according to the Census 2010, Waste Management team decided in 2014 to expanded its series of summer events to include the Latino community.

The work began with the 2014 Fiestas Patrias at Seattle Center where the team engaged with the Hispanic/Latino residents in King County and participated in the South Park community parade in partnership with the Facilitadores de Reciclaje from King County's Solid Waste Division. Fiestas Patrias is one of the largest events for the Latino community, held during Hispanic Heritage month. This provided an opportunity for Spanish-language customers to ask questions and gather the latest tools and resources for increasing recycling and composting at home. This event attracts an estimated 18,000 attendees over the course of two days and the parade garners 1,000 spectators in South Park. Waste Management created an interactive game for the event, a Spanish-language recycling information station that encouraged families and children to place items in the proper bin-recycle, compost, garbage - in 30 seconds, providing a hands-on learning opportunity. At the event, attendees were also asked to take a pledge to hang the Spanish-language guidelines in their homes where everyone can see them and use the guide to properly sort their items. Three winners were selected among those that pledged and received gift cards to grocery stores. Waste Management engaged with more than 250 event attendees; as a result, 82 families took the pledge and 88 tote bags and 264 guidelines were handed out.

In 2015, the Waste Management Spanish-language Recycling Information Station engaged families and children in a 30-second hands-on learning opportunity to show how to properly sort waste into recycling, compost and garbage bins. Summer events kicked off at Fiesta Premio Esmeralda, an iconic and well-recognized Latino community event hosted by Emerald Downs in Auburn, Washington. In July, the team engaged with attendees at Hispanic Seafair, which attracted a very diverse group of Latino community members. Finally, Waste Management participated once again in Fiestas Patrias. Across the three events in 2015, Waste Management conducted one-on-one outreach with more than 800 people, 786 families received a tote bag and nearly 300 Latino people played the Recycling Information Station's interactive sorting game. Additionally, 463 people pledged to use the Spanish guidelines at home to recycle right and recycle often. The 62 percent pledging to recycle more and use the tools provided is an incredible increase from 33 percent in 2014.

In 2014, Waste Management, King County and Snohomish County launched a transcreation project to develop in-language garbage, recycling and compost guidelines that are appealing and culturally relevant to populations who speak: Amharic, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Hindi, Korean, Russian, Somali and Vietnamese in King and Snohomish Counties, excluding Seattle.

The purpose of the project is to better communicate Waste Management service guidelines to more community members. To accomplish this, Waste Management, along with King and Snohomish Counties, recruited native speakers to help with the project to ensure the Waste Management signage was culturally relevant. The transcreation model for this project was:

1. Research and Planning: The research and planning phase included copy-editing and redesigning of the original source content (copy, images and layout) of the guidelines, researching and evaluating word choice and identifying culturally relevant images.
2. Usability Testing: Usability tests were conducted in a two-phase process over four days. First, four to six individuals from households within each language group were recruited to receive and utilize the in-language guidelines for three days while doing a simple three-day, in-home exercise. On the fourth day, a moderation team interviewed one participant from each household on their experience.
3. Modifications: At this stage, the results were compiled into a set of actionable directives intended to optimize the effectiveness of the guidelines. These directives then led to changes in copy, images and design, and were informed by the analysis.
4. Community Review: The community members or "returning" participants were asked to provide any high-level feedback of the copy, images and layout. In all, the transcreation project produced two sets of in-language guidelines for the seven language communities as well as two sets of corresponding English back translated guidelines for each county. This is a total of 90 individual documents produced with new, culturally relevant messaging.