Cotswold lifts kerbside participation through door-stepping

The rural council's campaign was conducted by Bristol-based The Recycling Consortium (TRC) and funded with money from Cory Environmental's Landfill Tax Credits, with support from Cotswold's waste collection contractor SITA UK.

The Gloucestershire district council offers a fortnightly kerbside box scheme run by SITA. The waste management company uses a 'kerbsider' vehicle with material specific containers to collect glass, paper and cans from all 37,000 households spread over 440 square miles. Because the population is so dispersed, the council has had difficulties with the collections and consequently missed its target to recycle 33% in 2003/04.

Door-stepping
To tackle problems with participation in its recycling schemes, the council held the ten-month awareness and education campaign. TRC's door-stepping team, made up of local people visited almost 11,000 households, of which 50% were at home to talk to the canvassers.

The awareness work resulted in 1,546 orders for kerbside boxes taken by canvassers, with the council also receiving more direct requests during the campaign. The canvassers found that many residents had thought they were restricted to having just one box, these residents then requested second boxes after the visit.

Monitoring of the canvassing areas after the campaign found increases in participation of up to 6%. In comparison the control area, where no canvassing took place, saw participation drop by 1% in the same period.

Dr Amelia Mullins, waste and sustainability manager at Cotswold district council, said: “We are really pleased with the results of this project. The large number of extra boxes requested shows that people are keen to recycle more and the project has achieved our goals of increasing participation and the amount of materials we collect for recycling.”

In 2002/03 Cotswold council recycled 16% of household waste aiming for a target to recycle 40% by 2005/06. The first two quarters of 2004 has seen a 15.5% recycling rate in the district, up from 12.8% in the same period of 2003.