Challenge 1: Newcastle City Council

Claire Holloway: 
Currently we are up in Newcastle, so brilliant to be here. And the challenge is all about reducing waste. So it's very much in line with a challenge that's facing councils across the country.  

Gary Weatherstone: 
So the question that the groups have been asked is how they can influence residents’ behaviour to improve the recycling and re-use of their waste.  

Helen Gelder: 
Today we started the morning hearing from the Chief Executive and the Leader and the council member. They introduced the challenge to us and then we got together into our teams.  

Ramisa Yazdani Biouki 
I'd like to thank Newcastle City Council for going through the morning in such a welcoming way especially considering it's our first challenge. I think that really eased a lot of us into this. 

Paul Lant: 
Today we took the contestants on a tour of Newcastle, so two contestants from each team. Dave, our mini bus driver, took us around nine different locations on a very windy day and we showed them the different types of housing across the city.  

Adam Towers: 
We saw some really affluent parts of town, some more deprived parts of town. Areas that were populated by students. So there was a real good cross-section.  

Marelize De Beurs 
It was interesting when you see a building, and you see the people, and you see the infrastructure around it, to put yourself in their shoes and think about how it might affect them. There’s a sort of a mix of responsibility with the resident and also with the structure and the service provision around them.  

Jack Pearce: 
I came into this challenge not really knowing a lot about waste and recycling, so I've learned a lot already about the way that waste and recycling is done in Newcastle, the different challenges that they face, particularly with different demographics.  

Martin Chastney: 
I've learned an enormous amount about waste, not least how important it is to understand people's behaviour and the constraints that they have into adopting better waste management principles.  

Kerry Challoner: 
The time is flying by. I've attended a panel with some of the members of Newcastle City Council and listened to what they have to say about their current strategy. At the moment we're feeding that back to see how that relates to what other people have found out on the site visits.  

Che-kwon Sterling: 
I’m feeling pumped. I’ve learnt that there's different strategies that we can input to ensure that our residents are very much engaging. I've also learnt about what they're currently doing in schools to ensure that they’re preventing waste as well. I'm just really looking forward to presenting tomorrow.  

Martin Chastney: 
Hi, just got back to the hotel room after the first day in our challenge number one. It’s been great, it’s been fantastic. I guess I should get used to being outside my comfort zone because this is probably the new normal.  

Jack Pearce: 
The team worked really well together today. I think we’ve all found it a challenge trying to get to grips with a brand new area for all of us in terms of not only geography but waste. I think we're in a good place to crack on tomorrow and develop our presentation.  

Michael Barrett: 
It's day two of the challenge and the teams seem to have settled on their plans now, which is really good. They’re going to be testing these to a panel this morning before presenting to the judging panel this afternoon.  

Virginia Ponton: 
And it’s always really fascinating at this point to see how the teams work together. They’re given a big task, but they don't know each other's strengths and weaknesses yet. It's a completely different way of working compared to what they would do day-to-day in their council role.  

Faith Scott Deuchar: 
I think we're starting to work really well together as a team. We've got clear responsibilities for this morning in terms of who's writing the report, who's writing the presentation, who will be attending the ideas testing phase.  

Hannah Barton: 
Yesterday we came up with a set of ideas and then we had some feedback later on in the day that was like, oh I think that's maybe not going to enable enough behavioural change. So we pivoted at that point. But then having now gone into the ideas testing, they seemed much more keen on our regional ideas. So we’re now kind of pivoting back.  

Jack Pearce: 
Our proposal is a two pronged strategy. The first is to introduce a new waste collection policy whereby food waste collections would come in weekly for the majority of households. More frequently for those with shared bins. Alongside that we would put together a communications and engagement strategy with some pilot interventions targeted at reducing waste and encouraging re-use. As part of our pitch, we are having a couple of our team members in the audience. They're going to stand up and act as residents who are incensed by this new change, and we're going to put forward reasons why it makes sense.  

Martin Chastney: 
We want to take people on a journey, a journey to zero waste. That is taking people who are relatively engaged with recycling already and getting them to do it better. We’re hoping that’s a mass part of the market, making an incremental change and then leads to pathways through to re-use and ultimately lower waste use.  

Pam Smith: 
We chose team Dynamic. They had the best way of engaging with residents about a really difficult subject. There are some ideas around the overall strapline for recycling, which is You’ve Bin Heard. Then we had Sting the Seahorse, which would engage young people. Then there were lots of other ideas to engage families, students, older people, and just make recycling exciting and relevant to people's lives.  

Marion Williams: 
Well, I noticed how keen the officers were to be involved in this, and it renews an enthusiasm for something that they've been working on for a long time, and we will watch with enthusiasm and interest the rest of the challenge.  

Martin Chastney: 
I guess I’m feeling a little bit deflated having not won the challenge. But also really proud of what we've done over the last couple of days.  

Jack Pearce: 
I feel really happy. I'm really pleased. Great to win. Great to get the captain out the way on the first challenge. I think there were a lot of things that contributed to our success. We worked really well as a team. I think everyone played to their strengths. I think we delegated the tasks well. So I think everyone working together was the reason for our success.