Devon awareness campaign hailed a success

The awareness campaign was launched in October 2002 and ran until March 2003, involving advertising, marketing and research (see letsrecycle.com story). It was funded by a 1 million grant from DEFRA's 140 million fund given to Devon Authorities’ Recycling Partnership.

The results of the campaign, published today, showed that it helped increase kerbside collected tonnages of recyclates by 31% compared to the previous year. Also, the growth of residual waste going to landfill has decreased to 0.88% from 3.3% the year before, the first time in four years there has been such a huge decrease in growth.

Devon county councillor David Morrish, executive portfolio holder for the environment, said: “Once again Devonians have proved that they are not the sort of people to avoid their responsibilities with regard to recycling and they should be congratulated for such an impressive response.”

All the district councils collected a higher in tonnage of recyclables from their kerbside collections and bring banks. The following table shows the increase in recycling in October 2002 to March 2003 when compared with the same period in 2001 to 2002:

New collections
During the awareness campaign, Mid Devon, East Devon and Teignbridge did not change their collection schemes. The other districts introduced additional collection rounds, changed contractor or initiated other projects and so the increases in tonnages are not entirely due to the campaign.

Mr Morrish said: “We are already in the top five counties for recycling performance, and it will be interesting to see how this superb effort has moved us up the league table. It is important that we build on this excellent foundation in order to achieve yet more success in the years to come.”

The doorstepping campaign showed that there was an average 95% awareness of recycling services. The additional market research into the success of the awareness campaign showed that 84% of respondents at the end of the scheme said they had seen or heard the advertising, with television spots getting the biggest reaction.

Representing the view of the Devon Authorities' Recycling Partnership, East Devon district councillor Ann Liverton said: “The results of the ‘Don’t Let Devon Go To Waste’ campaign have not just been about quantity, but they have been about quality too. The people of Devon have really embraced the recycling ethos with enthusiasm. We were also heartened by the impressive awareness of recycling and recycling facilities across the county.”