South West region comes together to tackle food waste

In autumn 2009, the South West Waste and Recycling Forum (SWWRF) and Resource Futures worked with all the 35 local authorities (LAs) across the South West to deliver a collaborative campaign on food waste reduction, which was conceived by the forum the previous year.

Originally the target was to get buy-in from 80% of the LAs across the region, so bringing together 100% of them to reap the benefits of partnership working, was considered a major success.

Resource Futures role was to project manage key aspects of the campaign and crucially, was in weekly contact with all the authorities, both updating them on regional activities and collecting and collating data from them on activities happening at a more local level. Other aspects of project management by Resource Futures included production of campaign materials, customised from the LFHW national campaign, production of a campaign pack to be used as a ‘bible’ by the LAs involved, leading on campaign data capture systems to track campaign progress and finally reporting on campaign outcomes.

SWWRF were successful in attracting WRAP and SW RIEP funding and in addition, local authorities were asked to contribute whatever amount they could afford to the campaign ‘pot’. This worked well, as everyone could benefit from the partnership activities even if they had little or no spare budget to contribute.

Campaign messages were developed by a steering group of 12, drawing on the expertise of recycling officers from across the region, in conjunction with Resource Futures. The formation of this kind of partnership provided an excellent model for other areas where local authorities want to work together. The main benefits were; sharing expertise, knowledge and skills, sharing of the workload involved in running a large communications campaign having an external project manager to pull things together and also the cost savings achieved by bulk purchasing.

The main focus of this meticulously planned, month-long campaign was a pledging activity with prizes, which was rolled out through the media, online and at roadshows and events.

Photo: Plymouth Raiders endorse a campaign to tackle food waste in the South West

Campaign activities and communications included:

• Press advertorials and press coverage

• Radio advertising
• Leaflets, posters and other roadshow materials
• Regional prize draw
• Food Waste Diaries
• Roadshows and events

The  successes of the campaign included:

• Running 118 events were attended by 13,498 visitors
• 1,899 pledges were made at events, 2,201 at other venues and 2,413 on-line Radio adverts appeared on 28 radio stations and aired 3,155 times
• Advertorials appearing in 49 publications with press coverage and visits to publication web sites producing 6,693,337 ‘Opportunities to See’ (OTS). The total value of Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) was £100,330, highlighting further value for money.*

Research was undertaken before and after the campaign period to determine ‘committed food waste reducers’ in the South West and to determine if intended pledged behaviour resulted in attitudinal changes and forming of new habits and to investigate the role of LFHW pledge card initiative and the impact of the advertising. Results showed for example, that approximately 70% of respondents were ‘bothered by food waste a fair or great amount’ but this increased to 83% for those that had seen the campaign advertising.

Liz Poulter from Devon County Council said of Resource Futures: ‘For the efficient running of the campaign, it was important that Resource Futures, who already knew all about what we hoped to do and achieve, were asked to manage aspects of the project at an early stage. Their drive, attention to detail and general ability to understand and report on the campaign and understand its nuances at a local level, stood us in great stead.’

Indeed, the campaign was recently awarded a Gold Green Apple Award for ‘Best Partnership Working’ and was a finalist in the Letsrecycle.com ‘Best Local Authority Recycling Initiative and was winner of Plant and Waste Recycling’s ‘Food Waste Award’.

*Details of how figures were calculated are available from Resource Futures on request.