Community engagement

Getting the community on the side of the environment

Working directly with communities and engaging them to promote resource efficiency - from recycling and waste minimisation to reducing water usage and cycling - is a powerful tool in encouraging behavioural change.

These communities don’t have to be in a geographical area. They might be people that share a common interest, such as religious groups, local environmental groups, neighbourhood watch or even the local golf club. Our service is especially useful in tackling communities or areas that:

• Have low participation in desired behaviours

• Use recycling and refuse collection services incorrectly

• Aren’t aware of the services on offer

We are also particularly successful with activities where you want people to NOT do something. For instance, not waste food, not buy stuff (waste minimisation), not use a garden sprinkler or not use the car.

Finding ways to engage

Our Community and Public Engagement Consultants can help by:

• Working with you to identify everything that is stopping a community from
changing its behaviour

• Identifying the best community groups to engage with - in order to deliver key
messages to target householders

• Harnessing the power of residents’ enthusiasm to spread the word themselves

• Establishing two-way communication between your organisation and your local
community

Resource Futures are pioneers in this field. Since the 1980s we have become expert in providing practical waste reduction and recycling projects to local communities. This puts us in an excellent position to help you reach and work with your local community - communicating recycling and waste messages as well as wider sustainability and resource management issues.

Project Synopses

Engaging the Residents of North London with Love Food Hate Waste

Resource Futures recruited and managed two embedded Outreach Workers to support the North London Waste Authority’s, WRAP funded, Love Food Hate Waste campaign. During the seven month period, the Outreach Workers organised and delivered over sixty roadshows in supermarkets, businesses, libraries and at community groups, across NLWA’s seven constituent boroughs, to engage more than 3,500 people with the campaign.

Working with the Community Sector Training Course

In 2006, Resource Futures were commissioned to produce a Training Module for inclusion in WRAP’s Advanced Recycling Manager’s Training Course on how to work with the community sector.

Communal composting in East Sussex

Residents of flats diagnose their Kitchen Waste with the Doctors Householders who had never home-composted before, or those who just needed a little support, could contact the Compost Doctors over the phone, by email, at events or at talks and presentations to discuss their composting questions and issues.