The campaign, a part of Warwickshire’s ‘Grey to Green offensive’, has been designed to drive up organic waste capture rates by convincing more residents to throw food waste into their green commingled food and garden waste bin, rather than their grey residual waste bin.
Currently, it is estimated that a total of 43,000 tonnes of Warwickshire’s residual waste is food waste that could be treated if placed in organic waste bins provided to residents.
Much of the focus of the campaign is through an online e-marketing drive, with an email communication sent to around 150,000 residents outlining what food waste is eligible for collection from the kerbside.
The Partnership has also used pay-per-click advertising on Facebook and Twitter, and is combining its online efforts with door-to-door canvassing, updated branding on collection vehicles and billboard advertising. Residents are also being offered the chance to win one of three free iPads, as well as a year’s supply of compostable kitchen caddy liners.
e-marketing
According to the Partnership’s project manager for waste management, David Whitehouse, the initiative is one of the largest e-marketing campaigns around waste and recycling in the UK to-date.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, he said: “For some time we have been encouraging residents to take up home composting, but we feel that we are arriving at a point where we have saturated demand for home compost bins. We are now looking to get people to move from putting their food waste into their green rather than their residual waste bin.
“We have found that because we have been successful in extracting other streams that food waste remains the biggest single component in residual waste bins.”
He added: “Ultimately, if everyone in Warwickshire used their green bin then that would save up to £2.5 million which would go back into council services.”
Funding for the initiative is coming from the county’s Behaviour Change Programme, although Mr Whitehouse added that the budget for the campaign is relatively modest due to the largely low-cost nature of online communications.
The Warwickshire Waste Partnership, which comprises North Warwickshire, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Rugby, Stratford on Avon and Warwick councils, covering around 231,000 households.
Each of the boroughs collects food waste from households on a fortnightly basis commingled alongside garden waste, with material collected from homes in the south of the county sent for treatment at Biffa’s IVC facility at Ufton, or to a facility run by Earth Worm in Daventry from the north.
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