Increasing can recycling

UPDATE: Get it Sorted BCME campaign winner of the CIWM Best Communication Campaign of 2011! Click here to read more.

BCME (Beverage Can Makers Europe) is a non-profit-making trade body that represents Europe's leading drinks can manufacturers who produce over 95% of the beverage cans in Europe.

Their goal is to maximise market opportunities for the beverage can and proactively position and support the positive attributes and image of the metal can relative to other beverage packaging alternatives.

48 sheet billboard

One of their main activities is to monitor the beverage can's environmental performance and support recycling programmes to increase the the number of cans recycled. 

With this in mind the BCME set up a project with WRAP to investigate whether promotion of can recycling (as a single material), would be effective in increasing the tonnage of cans collected for recycling.

First mail out leaflet reveals the transformation from cans to desirable products.

Significant research was carried out to establish the recovery of cans through local authority recycling schemes in different areas of the UK and households from differing socio-economic groups.

Several design concepts for the metals recycling campaign were produced and tested across the socio-economic spectrum.  A favoured design was established which had the greatest impact in encouraging people to recycle cans.

Having established a favoured design concept two promotional projects were developed with different local authorities using source separated collections and co-mingled collections of recyclable.  Monitoring regimes were agreed and set up to measure whether the proposed promotions would have any effect on the tonnage of cans collected for recycling.

BCME needed help in delivering these two campaigns in the local authority areas. 

Get it Sorted input

Because of our extensive experience in promotion of recycling for local authorities and running recycling campaigns, BCME came to Get it Sorted to deliver these two projects based on the favoured concepts.

Second mail out leaflets

The first campaign, based in Nuneaton and Bedworth, where recyclables are sorted at the kerbside, consisted of a comprehensive metals recycling campaign which included the following activities:

  • Development, planning and scheduling of the project
  • Designs for initial and subsequent leaflets and delivery to all households in the area, including additional product photography
  • Developing press advertising, information point advertising, billboards and posters; including purchase of all media
  • Provision of materials for roadshows and displays to be manned by BCME and the Council
  • Conducting 1200 face to face attitudinal surveys before and after the campaign to establish the change in understanding and attitudes to the recycling of metals.

The second campaign was conducted in East Hampshire where the recycling collections are comingled in a wheeled bin. This was much simpler and only involved two mailouts, three weeks apart, into specific round areas, where the impact of the can recycling promotion and the tonnage increase could be precisely monitored. Monitoring was conducted at the MRF for the entire loads collected and not just a sample of material.

Artwork for pop-up displays used for manned exhibitions

We are currently in the process of producing the final report; this will capture the essence of the entire project and pull together the results of the trials (this will be available from BCME and WRAP towards the end of 2010). Outcome of the trials are very positive and will also be reported shortly.

Newspaper advertising

All the promotional material will be output in the appropriate format and uploaded as templates to the Recycle Now Partners website so that other local authorities can make use of them to promote recycling of cans in their area.  

Conclusion

  • This was a complex project to establish whether the promotion of a single material would have an impact on tonnages recycled and attitudes to recycling of that product
  • BCME used a number of agencies to work with but singled out Get it Sorted to deliver the campaign because of our experience with local authorities in this field
  • Templates for household metals recycling promotions will be available on the Recycle Now Partners website for download in the near future

 For more information click here to see the WRAP BCME case study.