Zero Waste Challenge Week
Report 2008
Contents:
1. Background
The Zero Waste Challenge Week was conceived by Bath & North East Somerset Council to promote the concept of ‘zero waste’ and the issues around waste minimisation.
It was first run in 2006 and won the Valpak ‘Best Waste Minimisation Award’ at the 2007 National Recycling Awards.
In 2008, the Council joined up with Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Councils to promote the week on a more regional basis. The project has also been duplicated by a number of local authorities across the country.
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2. What is the Zero Waste Challenge Week all about?
The aim of the Zero Waste Challenge Week is to see how little you throw in your rubbish bin over the course of a week. This can be done by recycling and composting as much as possible, by reusing items and avoiding purchasing unnecessary things as much as possible.
Although the ultimate target is ‘zero’ any reduction in the amount that is normally thrown away is an achievement – by aiming high we hope to encourage people to challenge themselves and use their imagination to find new ways of cutting down on what they throw away.
The challenge has been kept to a week as a manageable period of time to try and implement changes. It’s important to remind people that the challenge is only for a week, but most people do report that they make some permanent changes as a result of the week.
The week should be as flexible as possible to accommodate the people taking part. For example, it might suit people to start the week at a different time to fit around their refuse collection days or if they’re going away. Not everyone within the household may want to take part and the level of commitment people show will vary according to a multitude of factors.
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3. Promoting the Zero Waste Challenge Week
The week can be promoted through all the usual communication channels (leaflets, posters, websites, press releases, roadshows, adverts etc.) but there are some key points to take note of when looking to publicise the week:
3.1 Promotional Materials
As these are being used to promote Zero Waste Challenge Week they must all set an example of good practice. For example:
- Do not over-order posters and leaflets – carefully calculate how many you need in advance – you can always order more later
- All material should be printed on recycled paper and this should be stated, ideally with advice to recycle the paper once it’s been finished with
- With the exception of posters, all literature should be double sided and no larger than necessary (we used A5 back to back flyers)
- Information packs issued to the public were in black and white using a range of formats so that those issuing them could print out the exact number they needed on any printer
- The preference where possible, was to provide email and online access to reduce the need to print
3.2 Effective publicity
People taking part in the week responded to a range of publicity, but by far the most effective was word of mouth, particularly as this gave an opportunity to dispel any myths, answer any questions and to persuade people that the challenge was manageable (see Appendix 1 for results on publicity) School and community groups played an important role in helping with this and guidance packs were produced to help give them ideas of how they could help promote the challenge.
3.2.1 Schools
A handful of schools responded and actively helped to promote the challenge by:
- Putting up posters around the school
- Sending information home (eg via newsletters, letters, leaflets)
- Holding assemblies or inviting the Council to hold an assembly
- Taking part themselves (eg holding zero waste lunches, trying to reduce paper use over the week)
3.2.2 Community groups (including Parish Councils, local environment and residents groups)
Community groups helped to promote the week in various ways according to their resources. Promotions included:
- Distributing posters and leaflets
- Publishing information in local newsletters and on local websites
- Arranging public meetings to promote the week
- Promoting the week at local events and fairs
- Visiting people’s houses to encourage them to take part
Schools and community groups were effective ways of encouraging local people to take part but were labour intensive to provide the support that was needed. Briefing events were held to encourage involvement from communities and one to one discussions and attendance at meetings also helped to promote the scheme. It may be effective to select a few keen ones and work more intensively with them rather than spreading oneself too thinly.
3.3 The Media
The challenge was very appealing to the media and the first year gained a tremendous amount of both local and national publicity including BBC Breakfast News (live broadcasts on 2 consecutive weeks), The Independent and the Guardian, BBC Points West, 2 local radio stations and 5 local newspapers.
In subsequent years, the publicity has reduced and the key has been in producing new angles to maintain the interest of the press, as there is a danger of ‘zero waste week fatigue’.
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4. Monitoring and Evaluating Zero Waste Challenge Week
Waste minimisation can be notoriously difficult to measure and this week is no exception. The measures that we have put in place include:
4.1 Measuring the number of people registering to take part
People are actively encouraged to register by contacting the Council (by phone, email or through the website). In return for registering, they receive an information pack.
The difficulty with registering is that people find it a chore and if they have registered for a previous year are unlikely to do so again. We are aware that people take part without registering but equally there may be people who register who subsequently don’t take part, therefore these figures can only be used as a general guide.
There is the additional complication where community groups are taking part as people may not register directly with the Council and the community group may not be able to provide complete records of who has actually registered.
4.2 Measuring the number of people reporting back on their week
It has been difficult to get people to report back on their week. Once again, it may be perceived as a chore and once the week is over, it tends to get forgotten about.
This year, a £50 prize draw was offered as an incentive for people to return their forms. This saw the number of forms returned in Bath and North East Somerset rising from 21 in Year 1 to 60 in Year 3. However, whilst the prize draw was a definite incentive for some, it was not for others and a number of people who returned their forms declined to take part in the prize draw. Additional publicity and impressing on people the importance of returning their forms also helped.
Most forms were returned by FREEPOST and although an email option was provided this needed to have been made clearer. There was also an online option for reporting.
Once again, these forms only included the people who had a) registered and b) returned their forms and are likely to be an underestimation.
Please see Appendix 2 for information on forms returned.
4.3 Measuring the amount of rubbish thrown away the week before the zero waste challenge and the week itself.
As the numbers taking part are not high, measuring changes in total refuse collected would be meaningless as the amounts would be too small to register therefore we asked people to self report.
Self reporting includes a level of trust but there is no reason to believe that the reports are not genuine. No prizes are offered for performance so there is no incentive to ‘cheat’ when reporting back.
In order to make reporting flexible we asked people to record ‘before’ and ‘after’ in a way that suited them (eg by weight or number of carrier bags, black sacks etc.) with the proviso that they used the same measure both times. The measures would then be calculated into percentages. Most people achieved this.
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5. What are the benefits of holding a Zero Waste Challenge Week?
- Great opportunity for some good publicity
- An opportunity for people to actively engage in waste minimisation in a practical and wholistic way
- An opportunity to involve the local community in a practical way
- Provides a worthwhile activity to help stretch people who are already doing a lot
- Real reductions – reports over the past three years show people overall threw away between 25 – 50% of what they would normally throw away and the majority of people reporting back said that they had made permanent changes as a result of the week.
- Great way to identify waste reduction tips and areas that people have difficulty with
- The week can be cheap to run. Aside from officer time, basic materials can be produced cheaply and how much money to set aside for advertising is up to the discretion of each authority.
- See Appendix 4 for the strengths of the week as reported by local participants
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6. What are the challenges involved with Zero Waste Challenge Week?
6.1 Individual challenges
- The biggest challenge was forgetfulness as any changes to our usual habits take time to adjust to. Therefore it is important to give advice on planning and thinking ahead.
- Access to resources varied. For example, if living in a big city, you have a wider choice of shops including more geared to selling loose and refillable items. In a small village without transport, your choices are much more limited.
- Plastic packaging proved a real barrier to people, particularly for favourite or staple products (eg cheese, yoghurt). Advice can be given on ways round these but at the end of the day it’s an individual choice as to what’s practical.
- Things beyond the person’s control ranged from postal deliveries with non recyclable packaging to other people (eg within the same household) who may have shown less commitment.
6.2 Organisational challenges
- The title ‘Zero Waste’ can be off-putting as some people interpret it as meaning you can’t use anything or you can’t throw anything in the bin. Therefore some organisations may opt for a different name. In Bath and North East Somerset we have continued with the name for two reasons; a) The Council has adopted a vision of zero waste - the week helps to promote this and raise awareness of what the concept actually means and b) by having such a challenging target, we hope that people will strive even further to try and reach it.
- Many people saw it as a great idea for other people – the challenge was getting them to give it a go as well.
- Producing appealing material within the limitations of zero waste challenge week (eg black and white printable registration packs) and getting the level of information right (comprehensive enough to address people’s questions, short enough not to be daunting)
- Misconceptions about the week. There have been a couple of occasions where the zero waste challenge week has been incorrectly linked with issues such as alternate week collections. This can have the danger of deflecting from the real purpose of the week.
- Publicity shy individuals. The media is keen to find out how people get on and follow particular families but many people who want to take part may not want publicity and finding people who are happy to do both can be quite a challenge (However, after the event this may be easier. In Bath and North East Somerset, this year half of the respondents said they were happy to be contacted for follow up publicity).
- Getting the timing right. The week needs advance publicity and involving local groups means several months notice so it’s important to select the time of year carefully so that you can advertise it effectively beforehand and ensure their involvement in the preceding weeks. Further challenges include avoiding school and university holidays and half terms, plus seasonal events (Bonfire Night, Halloween, Christmas, Easter etc.)
- There is a lot of work involved. The week really is a matter of you get out of it what you put in, but to get good results, you do have to put in a lot of effort.
- See Appendix 5 for weaknesses and improvements put forward by those taking part
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7. Zero Waste Challenge Week 2008
This year, Bath & North East Somerset Council teamed up with Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Councils to promote the challenge across the region.
The key features of organising a regional promotion include:
- Ensuring the key messages are the same and the branding and use of logos are consistent
- Flexibility to allow for different approaches and levels of involvement according to the needs of each authority
- The benefit of being able to advertise jointly across the region and share costs
- Agreeing an approach for producing joint press releases, maintaining contact on publicity and media opportunities and adapting to variations in coverage across the region
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8. Results of Zero Waste Challenge Week 2008
| Bath and North East Somerset |
| No. registering | No. forms returned | No. taking part from forms | % of waste put out compared to normal | No. making permanent changes** | No. who would take part again |
| 78* | 60 | 198 | 51% | 50 | 44 |
*(of which 15 through Council Connect – phone or email, 18 staff either registering themselves or a whole team (each team =1), and 45 downloading forms directly from the internet)
** See Appendix 3 for details of key changes
In Bath and North East Somerset, people reported taking the following actions to help reduce the amount that they threw away:
| Action | No. reporting |
| Reusing items | 42 |
| Reducing waste by avoiding or replacing items | 25 |
| Composting more (sometimes including using wormeries) | 22 |
| Reducing food waste | 22 |
| Recycling more things | 16 |
| Thinking more about what they purchase | 13 |
| Buying items in recyclable or compostable packaging | 10 |
| Bringing packed lunches in reusable containers | 9 |
| Finding ways to recycle difficult items such as plastic lids | 9 |
| Composting waste from the office | 6 |
| Making homemade food | 6 |
| Buying items in bulk | 5 |
| Thinking more about waste and planning ahead | 4 |
| Using reusable nappies | 2 |
People also reported the following areas of difficulty:
| Problem | No. reporting |
| Non recyclable plastic | 33 |
| Packaging on items | 27 |
| Broken or old items | 22 |
| Lids | 10 |
| Food waste | 10 |
| Non recyclable containers | 10 |
| Medicine | 6 |
| Tissues (colds, blood and white spirit) | 5 |
| Greaseproof or similar paper | 5 |
| Travelling away from home | 3 |
| Stickers or similar | 3 |
| Lightbulbs | 3 |
| Other people making mistakes | 3 |
| Toothbrushes/toothpaste tubes | 3 |
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9. The Future
The Zero Waste Challenge Week was initially run as a one off form of publicity but has managed to maintain the momentum over the past three years by changing the focus and involving more community groups.
There is a danger of ‘Zero Waste Challenge Week fatigue’ with the media and the population. This could be tackled by a) running the week less frequently (eg every 2 years) or b) changing the focus (eg working with a smaller, different section of the community each time or focussing on different waste streams eg a ‘zero food waste’ week).
On the other hand, the concept of a ‘zero waste week’ or similar has captured the imagination of authorities across the country and consideration is currently being given to developing a similar week run on a regional basis within the South West and lead by the South West Recycling Forum.
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10. Conclusion
The Zero Waste Challenge Week certainly has its challenges but it can be a very rewarding and worthwhile week to run and there is plenty of potential to run it in the way that suits the needs of each organisation.
It is worth noting that when explaining their motivation for taking part, people commented on being part of a wider event as well as wanting to rise to the challenge.
It is a unique and innovative way of tackling waste minimisation from a very practical view point that brings together not just waste reduction and reuse, but also makes the links to recycling and composting.
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Appendix 1
How did you hear about the Zero Waste Challenge Week?
(NB some people may have selected more than one option)
| Local meeting | 10 |
| Local group | 8 |
| Word of mouth | 7 |
| Newsletter | 7 |
| Website | 7 |
| Miscellaneous | 7 |
| Council paper | 5 |
| Leaflet | 5 |
| Email | 5 |
| Poster | 4 |
| Newspaper | 3 |
| School | 3 |
Appendix 2
Forms Returned
| Forms returned by FREEPOST | 44 |
| Forms returned by email | 6 |
| Forms completed online | 6 |
| Numbers in prize draw | 46 |
| Numbers declining prize draw | 11 |
Appendix 3
Key changes people made as a result of the week
| Change | No. reporting |
| Will give greater consideration to purchasing and/or packaging | 16 |
| Will start composting or compost more things | 9 |
| Already doing as well as they can | 8 |
| Will try harder and do their best in future | 7 |
| Will try to reduce the amount they throw away | 7 |
| Will recycle more things | 6 |
| Will reuse more things | 5 |
| Will compost at work more | 2 |
| Will do more to tackle food waste | 2 |
| Will buy more items in bulk | 2 |
| Will use reusable nappies | 1 |
Appendix 4
Reported strengths of the week
| Strength | No. reporting |
| It was a good idea | 21 |
| The publicity | 15 |
| The information was good | 7 |
| Enjoyed being part of something, the camaraderie and conversations | 6 |
| School involvement | 4 |
| Prize draw | 2 |
Appendix 5
Reported weaknesses of the event and suggested improvements
| Reported weakness | No. reporting |
| Not enough publicity | 16 |
| The timing (including need for flexibility and more warning) | 6 |
| Dislike of the word ‘zero’ | 5 |
| The information provided | 5 |
| Hard to motivate people to take part | 4 |
| Limited recycling facilities within Bath and North East Somerset | 4 |
| Practical difficulties with the week | 2 |
| Bureaucracy | 1 |
| Suggested improvement | No. reporting |
| Increase the publicity | 9 |
| Needed more specific information on a particular aspect of recycling | 8 |
| Involve more local businesses, supermarkets etc. | 7 |
| Involve the schools | 4 |
| Less bureaucracy | 2 |
| Make disposal harder for people | 2 |
| Keep trying | 2 |
| Change the name | 1 |
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