Question:
Good afternoon DLI,
I have an economics researcher who is interested in finding data on the amount of time that people spend on activities that benefit the environment. A more specific question is the average amount of time that Canadians spend recycling.
I thought that this data would be best found in a time use survey, such as the StatCan General Social Survey 2015 - Time Use (GSS). Searching the variables of this survey, I was able to locate the following variable: DUR19 Duration - Garbage, recycling, unpacking goods. This provides the total duration (in minutes) for taking out the garbage, recycling, compost, unpacking goods. Recycling is grouped with taking out the garbage, composting and unpacking goods which are activities that are not of interest for the researcher.
Given that the survey employs a retrospective 24-hour time diary, and that the responses were coded, is there data available from StatCan for only recycling?
If this data is not available from StatCan, does anyone else on the list have any recommendations on other possible sources?
Answer from subject matter:
“Unfortunately, as you noticed, it is not possible to isolate recycling only from GSS Time Use. We don’t have data on recycling only that I am aware of.”
Answer from DLI member:
While not about time spent on recycling per se, there does appear to be a lot of data sources available on this topic in general:
Searching in ODESI at the variable level for “recycl” found 107 surveys
https://search1.odesi.ca/#/search/_term_term=recycl*&type:1;&fromDate=Earliest&toDate=Present&refineColl_all:false&cora:false&icpsr:false&dlimf:false;&refineOdesi_all:true&statCaMicro:true&statCaAgg:true&pop:true&other:true;&addTerms@;&page:1&sort=date?uri=%2Fdataverse_sp%2Fdoi--10-5683_SP_IYYC4A.xml
