Pendle, a member of the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC), was the only council to pick up an award for its literature, which included a refuse and recycling calendar leaflet for residents and a special recycling edition of council newspaper Pendle News.
The annual calendar, which is distributed to all Pendle households, includes images that clearly show what can go into each recycling container, and is designed to take into account feedback from frontline staff and residents via the Waste & Recycling Focus Group.
Plain English campaign founder and director Chrissie Maher said: Although recycling is not the most exciting of subjects, staff at Pendle Council have produced material that is well written and attractive.
If residents need encouragement to read anything about recycling, this is the sort of material that will get their attention.
Other winners included Winstons Wish, Ford property maintenance, Prostate Cancer UK and We are Macmillan Cancer Support.
This is the second time Pendle has won a Plain English award, having received an accolade in 2011 for its range of communication materials.
“If residents need encouragement to read anything about recycling, this is the sort of material that will get their attention”
Chrissie Maher, Plain English
Councillor John David, who represents recycling in Pendle, said: These documents go out to all households in Pendle and have a very important message: to encourage people to recycle as much as they can using the right recycling container. Its vital that they are clear and easy to follow for all local residents, and our staff are committed to getting this right.
“It is very easy to talk in clichs and to use jargon. It is also very eager and I am delighted that our staff take the extra trouble to write sensibly.”
Meaningful
Waste & Recycling co-ordinator Carole Taylor added: Every year we aim to improve our leaflet to make the leaflet meaningful to all residents and something that they will keep to refer to throughout the year. This year, to encourage residents to read the leaflet we have used a competition which tackles one of our biggest problems of contamination in recycling loads.
This was another suggestion that came out of our residents focus group its great to be able to use their feedback to keep on improving our recycling communications.
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