"Innovations" Case Studies: Save Money and the Environment Too

Local Government, Funding, and Tips

• Local Government Challenges and Opportunities
• Campaign Funding
• Minnesota Reduce Waste Campaign
• Tips for Replication

Local Government Challenges and Opportunities

Save Money and the Environment Too 2000

In March 1999, the working group met and agreed to continue to support an annual campaign. Following the advice of media consultants to keep a consistent message, the same campaign messages and campaign format are being used again this year. This year’s TV spots will be reused. A new radio spot will be produced. The television ads have been translated into Spanish, which will increase the scope of the target audience.

Central Coast Media Coalition Forms to Sponsor Media Blitz

Based in part on the success of the San Francisco Bay Area campaign, another campaign is being organized. The Central Coast recycling community has banded together to sponsor a regional media blitz comparable to the Bay Area campaign.

The Central Coast recycling media coalition was formed last year to make more efficient use of their advertising budgets. Coalition members plan to produce and air radio and TV spots in the larger Monterey Bay media market which reaches all three Central Coast counties (Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Cruz). To date, participants in the group include Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, the Monterey Regional Waste Management District, the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority, San Benito County Integrated Waste Management, and the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville.

These jurisdictions have already tentatively pledged more than $30,000 to start an ongoing publicity campaign. While this amount represents a significant investment, more funding will be needed to make the year-long campaign effective so it will reduce the rate of disposal. The coalition intends to seek additional support for the campaign from jurisdictions not yet participating as well as from garbage and recycling hauling companies that are obligated by their contracts to raise customer awareness.

Another potential source of funding is the block grant program available to cities and counties under Chapter 817, Statutes of 1999 (Sher, SB 332), the bottle bill expansion law. Since the recycling ad campaign meets the DOC grant funding requirement to promote beverage container recycling, coalition members are encouraging their jurisdictions to set aside some of their block grant funds for the regional media campaign.

The group has targeted four major issues for the campaign:

• Global message: save money, save resources, 2000 compliance year for State mandate, garbage does not get sorted (a common misconception).
• Commercial waste reduction.
• Residential recycling, especially mixed paper collection.
• Multifamily recycling.

Initially, the coalition will make use of existing TV ads on the topic of waste reduction and recycling to place on Central Coast stations, which cover all three counties. Later, the group may produce additional advertising, including radio spots and Spanish-language ads. The media campaign will use the 1-800-CLEANUP environmental hotline number to provide specific local information to the public.

With all this pooled enthusiasm and spending power behind them, the coalition hopes that this will help them in achieving the 50 percent goal in their jurisdictions by the end of the year.

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Campaign Funding

Financial support for the campaign was received from the following jurisdictions and companies sometime during the past five years:

Cities

Counties/Regional Agencies

State Agencies and Associations

Industry

Indirect Services Provided

Minnesota “Reduce Waste-If Not You, Who?” Campaign

In another example of a similar campaign, the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance (MOEA) kicked off its “Reduce Waste-If Not You, Who?” campaign on Saturday, January 15, 2000. The campaign is in response to growing waste generation (up 21 percent per capita from 1992 to 1998) and the environmental and economic problems associated with those trends. On its current course, Minnesota will generate three times as much waste in the year 2020 as it does today. The state determined that they simply do not have the capacity for that much waste in their current system.

This is the state’s first broad-based consumer-focused waste reduction effort since an earlier Coordinators created an array of print pieces to aid local efforts, and a campaign version of the King County, Wash., waste-free Fridays program is kicking off in February. Their campaign target audience is Minnesota families with children at home (adults 25-54, kids 12-17) fitting the psychological profile of “early adopters,” those that are environmentally concerned and looking for the next step. Early research showed little-to-no consumer awareness of waste reduction by this target audience. Most consumers thought recycling was reducing waste.

The state is trying to draw attention to waste prevention as something distinct from recycling, working off of the successes with recycling in Minnesota to bring people up the waste management hierarchy to reduction. The state is offering some of their materials (TV commercials and some of the print pieces) via the MOEA web site. This web site will expand and change continually as materials are released throughout the year.

Table: Media Buy for Save Money and the Environment Too Campaign 2000

Other Public Education Campaigns That Promote Waste Reduction

Below is an overview of several public education campaigns in place that encourage citizens to send less waste to landfills, based on listings at the CIWMB web site.

America Recycles Day. America Recycles Day takes place on November 15 each year. This year’s key message is: “For Our Children’s Future...Buy Recycled Today.” Most events will focus on this buy recycled theme. For California events and information call Jim Kuhl at (562) 570-2850.

Second Chance Week. Second Chance Week is a grassroots public awareness campaign held each October to promote reuse, repair, resale, and donation opportunities throughout California. During Second Chance Week, local governments, community groups, reuse businesses, and other organizations work together to hold activities geared towards giving reusable items that might otherwise be thrown away a “second chance.”

Use Less Stuff Day. This event occurs one week before the biggest shopping day of the year-the day after Thanksgiving. The Use Less Stuff Day organizers have a guide and a contest for students. The guide is called The ULS Yuletide Guide: Tips and Gifts to Get More From Less. The goal is to encourage folks to buy recycled, reused, repaired, renovated, reconditioned, and reliable items. For more information contact Bob Lilienfeld at (313) 668-1690.

Earth Day. Earth Day Network is the international organization coordinating Earth Day events worldwide. Earth Day occurs on April 22 every year. For more information on Earth Day or on the 3,200 organizations in 167 countries that are part of Earth Day Network.

Other Ideas for Education Campaigns

• Target an activity (for example, environmental shopper programs and shopping tours).
• Target certain materials like yard waste, paper products, and packaging.
• Air public service announcements.
• Encourage use of reusables.
• Highlight the simple things (for example, guides to repairing, reusing, renting goods).
• Involve others (for example, environmental roundtables).

Tips for Replication

• Planning a regional campaign takes a lot of time and effort-allow for a year to set up your first campaign, and start planning the next campaign as soon as the current campaign has been completed. The first Shop Smart campaign took 14 months to plan, and work starts on the next campaign the day after the current one is completed.
• Success depends on having a good core group to do the planning and a staff person to keep things on track once the campaign has been established (this person can easily be part-time).· Don’t reinvent the wheel-search out and use existing materials and research (SMATET will allow any local government to use graphics, television, and radio spots).
• Don’t rely on grant funding for an ongoing campaign. Part of the stability of the SMATET campaign is that the base funding comes from cities and counties every year.
• Organize informally to minimize administrative costs. Key to this is allocating responsibilities clearly at the outset of the campaign, diligent monitoring of tasks and follow-up, and everyone contributing the best skills and resources they have available.
• In-store and display units are best used in individual community campaigns. Large regional campaigns would require too much volunteer labor to set these up. SMATET chose to focus their efforts on the use of paid and donated media coverage to get their messages across.

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Last updated: December 28, 2007