LAWR

hat do a gigantic plastic Christmas tree, the 'godfather of British bhangra' (a genre of Punjabi music) and a strawberry coming out of a street lamp have in common? They've all formed part of our new recycling promotion campaign at Ealing Council, which is already starting to pay dividends. Like many parts of the country, we're doing our bit to reach 50% recycling by 2020 and we know that communicating with residents has a massive role to play, so over the past year we've been trying out different methods to engage with our communities to get them recycling. The results so far…a near 3% increase in recycling in just one year (currently at 43.7%). The campaign has been designed to be multi-functional: Serving to inform and instruct, boost confidence in services, promote new services, push environ- mental messaging, inspire green think- ing and, ultimately, to encourage resi- dents to recycle more and waste less. That sounds like a lot for the aver- age Joe to take in and, indeed, much of the success of our campaign has come down to the targeted engagement we've undergone. In a family-orientated suburb that is multi-cultural, has mixed-tenure housing, is a commuter belt, and sits in the heart of west London, not everyone is the same. Of course, that means our messages need to hit home at a number of different levels with a diverse group of people. Our most difficult to reach area in the borough has traditionally been Southall. A hub of diversity, renowned for its music and much-visited for its distinct and delicious flavours, particularly from the Indian sub-continent; it is home to many for whom English is a second language. Other issues mean it is less renowned for its recycling rate. We wanted to try something new to engage residents across this part of the borough. The mes- sage was a simple instructional 'how and why' on recycling. The delivery of that message was the interesting part. Godfather of British bhangra In order to inspire and engage residents on a personal level we got in touch with the 'godfather' of British bhangra, Channi Singh OBE, and his daughter Mona (a model), who became the faces of the Southall recycling campaign. With endorsers like this, we plastered their faces and the messages on leaflets, billboards, bus shelters, local press and their voices even got outings on local Punjabi-speaking radio adverts. The focus was on the most popu- lar recyclable items: Paper, glass, cans, plastic and food waste. The community engagement stepped up a notch with multi-lingual door-knockers explaining what went in each container and going through the literature. It provided not only crucial 1-2-1 engagement but a real presence on the streets of Southall. The initial results have seen container requests soar by 356% compared to the previous year and a participation rate survey in Southall Broadway alone showed a near 5% increase in take up of recycling services. One local resident told us: "'Because you see a fashion icon doing that (recycling) then it motivates you to do it as well." Alongside this, we've targeted 'medi- um users', i.e. those who actively recy- cle, but could recycle more. Using ward participation data we focused a simple yet powerful message, a call to action to 'recycle one more thing' – referring to items that are not commonly recycled such as aerosols, Tetra Paks and textiles. And the message hit home through leaf- lets and on the backs of buses. Elsewhere, to encourage people to recycle during the festive period we erected a 19ft Christmas tree, made from 900 recycled (and empty) plastic bottles, outside Ealing Town Hall (the same amount wasted in the UK every two seconds). Our 'take two seconds to recycle' message hit home through viral tweets as people came from all over to have a selfie with our tree. The number of Christmas trees we collected for recy- cling increased by a massive 102%. Overall, Ealing's recycling campaign has proven that focussed engagement with individual communities is benefi- cial. It provides information that would not normally be accessible and helps to increase recycling rates. This is paramount as we will need to recycle more at a time when it appears that recycling rates across England are flatlining. W RWM WITH CIWM 2014 PREVIEW August 2014 Local Authority Waste & Recycling 19 Ealing Council, in west London, has adopted effective targeted waste campaigns to help increase recycling and waste prevention in low performing urban areas. Bassam Mahfouz explains how. Getting the right message across Councillor Bassam Mahfouz is cabinet member for environment and transport at Ealing Council. Faces of Southall recy- cling campaign bhangra singer Channi Singh and daughter Mona

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