Essex County Council’s Food Recycling Project

Around 1.5 million residents live in Essex, in more than 635,000 households and communal establishments. Both residents and households are predicted to grow exponentially.

Around 50 per cent of waste is recycled in Essex. Although this is above the national average, progress has slowed. Essex residents produce around 660,000 tonnes of waste and recycling per year.

To reduce general waste, increase recycling, and move waste up the waste hierarchy, in support of the draft Waste Strategy for Essex and the council’s strategic goals, Essex County Council (ECC) first had to understand what was being thrown away by residents to identify and highlight the main waste streams the council should focus on.

A waste composition analysis revealed a quarter of general rubbish thrown away was food. Weekly food recycling collections are already offered to most households, but there has been limited recent campaigning to promote participation. Food recycling collected is treated using anaerobic digestion to recover energy, whereas food placed in general rubbish is currently disposed of in landfill where it produces greenhouse gases and is costly to dispose of. Therefore, maximising food recycling is a priority for the council, delivering both environmental and financial benefits.

In response to priority areas of focus, the Love Essex team at ECC initiated a scoping programme to identify, develop, and trial new approaches to influence resident attitudes and behaviours with regards to waste and recycling.

To secure investment for a food recycling project, ECC designed a county-wide approach using WRAP best practice methodology, local research, and case studies from UK local authorities to provide robust justification for this large-scale project. The council also carried out a pilot study in one area of Essex to test materials and methodology.

Working in partnership with Essex district, city and borough councils, the project ran from March 2023 to March 2024 and consisted of three phases that were delivered to nine areas in total.

• Phase one: July 2023 – August 2023: Braintree, Colchester and Epping Forest.
• Phase two: October 2023 – January 2024: Harlow, Tendring and Uttlesford.
• Phase three: January 2024 – February 2024: Basildon, Maldon and Rochford.

The goals and measures of the project were:

• Deliver a physical package made up of the three items to 375,000 eligible households (leaflet, compostable liners and a sticker for the wheeled general rubbish bin).
• Support the physical roll-out with county-wide and area-specific communications.
• Work in partnership with the nine Waste Collection Authorities (WCAs).
• Achieve a 10 per cent increase in food tonnage recycled at kerbside.
• Save £206,000 from avoided disposal.

To deliver lasting behaviour change, ECC used the COM-B and EAST models for behaviour change to design the approach. Focusing on reaching target audiences, addressing barriers and educating on the environmental and cost benefits. The tools and know-how were provided to residents to make the desired behaviour change easy and sustained.

To promote the project, ECC used both tried and tested avenues and innovative routes to increase exposure to messaging, including a vox pop with BBC Radio Essex. An animated YouTube series was also developed and aired on ITVX and Sky. The series originated from social listening relating to why residents didn’t recycle their food with the aim that the tongue-in-cheek, informal content would provide residents with information to overcome common misconceptions. Trialling these new avenues provided valuable insight for future projects and campaigns.

Watch the series today on YouTube.

To increase trust and harness the power of making small changes, campaign materials educated residents about what happens to food recycling in Essex with a focus on the power generated by everyday food items, for example, recycling just six teabags can generate enough power to boil your kettle for another cup of tea.

The project was a first of its kind at ECC. Never had the council delivered a project on such an extensive scale with physical deliveries made to households across the whole county. The scale and ambition of the project reflected the high proportion of food found in residual waste and the need to increase participation in the long-standing food recycling services.

The Food Recycling Project has far exceeded targets. The impact of the project so far:

• 375,108 households across the nine eligible areas received materials.
• Food recycling tonnage data shows an average increase of
  21 per cent when comparing first three-month post-delivery with previous year. This is more than double the target set. Breakdown:
  • phase one – 19 per cent increase
  • phase two – 15 per cent increase
  • phase three – 29 per cent increase
• Initial avoided disposal cost savings are on track to exceed the project target.
• An estimated reduction in CO₂e emissions of over 90 per cent based on shifting food waste from disposal at landfill to recovery at anaerobic digestion.

Ongoing monitoring on tonnage, savings and CO2e emissions is taking place to understand the lasting impact of the intervention to understand whether further investment or intervention is required to maintain performance levels.

• Increased caddy requests from residents and operational feedback observing increased food recycling volumes and participation.
• Worked with 19 internal and external stakeholders in total.
• Communications:
  • displayed on bus backs and stops, vehicle liveries, library screens, email signatures, posters and flyers at Essex community supermarkets
  • promotion via 16 newsletter articles, 29 mentions in local and trade press, magazines with a combined readership of over 50,000, and a 40+ minute radio interview on BBC Essex
  • over 5.6 million impressions across Meta, YouTube, and Google
  • an animated Rubbish Rumours series with over 610,000 plays on YouTube
  • an un-skippable ad on ITVX and Sky with over 281,000 impressions
  • a post-roll-out resident feedback survey found that
    when residents received the items it boosted their
    knowledge and encouraged them to recycle their food

Deploying this county-wide project, ECC worked with stakeholders and suppliers to tailor the approach, secure essential materials at scale, produce communications assets, and work out the logistics of the roll-out. For external suppliers, joined up project working enabled all to understand interdependencies and the critical path. For ECC and the WCAs, established partnership working was enhanced by joint objectives of reducing the environmental impact of food in landfill and minimising the overall cost of disposal to the Essex taxpayer.

For such a wide-reaching project, a ‘whole council’ approach was adopted, with briefings and resources provided to elected Members, communications and customer service teams and waste officers to promote the project and secure support.

ECC works to support the WCAs in improving and promoting the food recycling service available throughout Essex via ongoing promotional work regarding food recycling and service provision.

The council is eager to maintain the momentum of this project and continue investing in food recycling by:

• Continuing to assess the tonnage data to provide both short and long-term impacts. This will inform ECC what further interventions are required and when.
• Carrying out a participation study to see how the project has shifted resident action.
• Investing in another food project targeting an additional 130,000 households.
• Using residual waste disposal costs savings (as a result of moving food from the residual waste stream and into the recycling) to support further necessary investment in this area.

Materials:

• Make it clear to residents that their bins will still be collected when a sticker is applied to their bins and that all wheeled bins had been stickered to encourage the whole neighbourhood to recycle their food.
• If the service across the delivery area differs, make sure you tailor your materials and communications correctly to reflect this to reduce confusion.
• The red colouration of the sticker was recommended by best practice.
• Provide bespoke liners as an additional avenue to enable residents to find out more about the project.
• Make it clear if the liners are meant for your inside or outside caddy, and if they are one-off.
• Use imagery instead of text where possible to make materials more accessible.
• Consider how you will store this equipment and the weight it will be for the people distributing it.

Stakeholders:

• Engage with all stakeholders as early as possible. - consider pre-communications with residents
• clarify the scope of the project with partners (timeline, actions, budget etc.)
• gain route data and a clear interpretation as early as possible if you are delivering materials
• make sure all relevant parties are involved: customer service, councillors, communication teams, partners, waste collection crews and neighbouring districts or counties etc.

Communications:

• Create a list of FAQs in an accessible place for all stakeholders and update this regularly.
• Create an asset pack to share with key stakeholders to make sharing messages as simple as possible, this could include social posts and imagery, newsletter articles, member briefings and media release examples.
• Be proactive. ECC used regular social media comments to create the animated series, Rubbish Rumours and inspire further behaviour change.
• Don’t be afraid to change your approach/comms and be as
  agile as possible
• Know your audience; research identified target groups and their barriers.
• Use A/B testing to measure how messaging and assets are received, then depending on data, tailor the approach accordingly.
• Consider what behaviour change models can help you structure your project and communications to drive change, for example COMB-B, EAST and Stages of Change.

Methodology:

• If your delivery company can follow waste collection crews, more wheeled general rubbish bins will be stickered at kerbside.
• Consider dryer months of the year when stickering is involved and test the weather-proof quality of materials before roll-out.
• Carry out a pilot study to test materials and messaging before a larger roll-out.
• Consider timing. Are there any local or general elections to consider and are any other services being rolled out that may affect the impact of the project.
• A phased rollout enabled ECC to adjust their approach and improve the roll-out.

Data:

• Have baseline data to compare your roll-out to, this could include participation surveys.
• Measure softer measures such as how many caddy requests and food recycling vehicle trips were taken.
• Consider measuring both the short and long-term impacts.

Procurement:

• Can you use a framework to reduce timelines?
• Consider regulations and limitations and start as early as possible.
• Factor in shipping delays to your timeline.

Contact person for the project: [email protected]