This article reports the analysis of six urban contexts in which a practical tool measuring individual skills concerning household waste recycling was tested. The tool is a structured questionnaire including a simulation task that assesses respondents' abilities to sort household waste adequately in a given context/municipality. Results indicate that the questionnaire can reach high levels of internal coherence and discrimination capacity and it can be administered together with a set of open-ended and closed questions to assess relationships with other relevant factors. Both the theoretical and applicative potentials of the instrument for educational and communicational domains are discussed.