Access and ease are often the first improvements most recycling programs can take on. Beyond that, is capability; as in the capability to increase the types of materials recycled.
The ultimate nirvana in being ecologically minded in terms of waste streams is to eliminate them (ok let's try for significantly reduce them) in the first place. Next to that is to reduce both landfill and recycling streams through the Re-use, Re-purposing, or Complete-use of those materials already within produced and/or owned. The ideal result of this reduction is to be left with waste that is contaminate free. There is an old saying: "One man's waste is the next man's treasure." It pretty much summarizes the required theme for successful recycling: The materials collected must be usable in some way. On a mass scale such as a community wide recycling effort, the costs for recycling cannot be prohibitive and, more often than not must be cheaper than the alternative of land filling the recycled/collected items. The ideal would be that all of the landfill garbage stream could be recycled and each type sold at a profit for the community; this is certainly not a reality in today's world.
To honestly address your question however, we would need to know more about what your current personal and community recycling habits and efforts before we can tell you how to improve upon them....Before there was freecycle.org, many communities had industry backed efforts to redistribute commercially generated chemical waste to others within the community and/or learning institutions. This "waste" may or may not have been a business process resultant or, simply a left over quantity of chemicals that would else wise have to be disposed of as hazardous waste. Cleaning chemicals, paints, gardening/pest control chemicals, and "chemistry shelf" chemicals were among the items. Often, they were listed on a computer in a spread sheet or data base format. From there, many communities found that they were disposing of quite a quantity of construction debris and similar types of listings and/or data bases were begun for the re-distribution of construction debris. Both were basically a freecycle.org type of board for the re-distribution of still usable, commercial materials although, not necessarily for free. A number of communities require a refundable deposit for specific types of disposable containers, prohibit some sorts of disposable containers, or require that businesses who sell specific types of items accept for free the return for recycling the same used items/materials for recycle. (Personally, I think we could reduce the amount of packaging, particularly plastic bubble packages, if we required each and every store to accept the used packaging. Imagine the amount of choking that just Wal-Mart, Target, Safeway, and Kroger would do if one of the states ruled that they had to accept back every piece of plastic packaging returned from their customers. My guess is that we would be moving to less packaging and more readily recyclable packaging country wide; the lobbying efforts against it could even help to boost a poorer state's whole economy for the duration of the campaign!)
Since then, many communities have actively encouraged the development of companies and/or industries that can handle large scale collection and then Re-use or Re-purposing of what would else wise be landfill waste or, recycled waste that would have to be shipped out of area. Much of this is done through the re-zoning or permitting the collection of and recycling/re-use/re-purposing activities on a space of land, the direction of folks to these locations when getting rid of certain types of materials, the refusal to accept certain types of materials within their landfill systems, the contracting of solid waste disposal to these companies of specific types of materials, allowing the use of the resultant product within their jurisdiction, the promoting of the resultant product, and/or the requirement of use of the resultant product. For example, many communities prohibit the tossing of compostable yard waste in their landfill garbage stream while enabling and contracting for a separate yard waste collection system, permitting huge chipping and composting facilities, requiring the use of the resultant material on government properties, and enabling the sale of additional product within the community. Sometimes, this is accompanied by a number of tax breaks, benefits, and even the provision of in-kind goods, services, facilities, equipment, and/or loans. Other communities have spent a reasonable amount of "tax payer dollars" when building new facilities and/or retro-fitting existing facilities to enable the use of what would else wise be waste such as methane and/or sanitary composting of solid waste from sewage treatment facilities.
Between the current grass roots emphasis on "being green" and the economic realities on both the house hold and commun