Bristol’s Binning
Bristol is a leader when it comes to waste and recycling in England, taking the number one spot for recycling rates for the past seven years. Data released by the DEFRA shows Bristol ranks number one out of the English core cities, with a recycling rate of 45.6% for 2021/22.
Yet, like most towns and cities, it still faces challenges with litter.
In November 2022, Hubbub together with Bristol City Council and Bristol Waste Company launched Bristol’s Binning, a campaign that challenged the people of Bristol to cut litter and bin big.
The problem
Did you know that two million pieces of litter are dropped every day in the UK?
In Bristol alone, picking up litter costs around £6 million and around 3,700 tonnes are collected every year: that’s the same weight as 300 double decker buses!
Creating a campaign identity targeted to our audience
We built on Hubbub research and insights from years of litter campaigns including our Big Boys Don’t Litter research, Treasure Your River, and Neat Streets in Bournemouth. This included shows that young males are most likely to litter. Hubbub polling in 2020 found that over a third of 16-25 year-olds had admitted to littering in the past month and that men were twice as likely to litter as women.
So, to create to create messaging and design that resonated with the young people of Bristol, particularly young men. We collaborated with students from University of Bristol and Bristol College.
The main messages took a step away from the traditional ‘finger wagging’ tone and moved towards humour and aspirational messaging.
Bristol’s Binning litter and recycling bins in action.
How we got Bristol Binning
We tested a range of interventions to raise awareness and reduce litter:
General waste voting bins
Three general waste voting bins were installed (and went viral on social media!)
Ballot bins
10 Ballot Bins alongside asking you to vote on topical subjectsRebranded bins
60 bins with colourful designs to make binning fun. They featured gaming motifs, cheeky rhymes and made sounds when you use them – cheering, trumpets and jungle music.New giant general waste bins
10 giant bins (1100L) added to litter hotspots and lively nightlife areas.On-street recycling bins
To reduce litter and increase recycling, we jazzed up wheelie bins with custom pyramid lids to test on-the-go recycling.
To spark conversation, raise awareness and engage public with the issue of litter, we needed to grab attention so we went big – really big:
Eco-art: We teamed up with eco-artist Wren Miller to visualise the amount of litter typically dropped on Baldwin Street on one busy day! She created a 4m high tsunami made up of 90kg of rubbish floating on Bristol Harbour from November 2022 to March 2023.
Introduced 25 lamppost banners around the campaign area, shared posters with local businesses and partnered with McDonald's to display signage on their restaurant bins and posters at their drive thrus.
Partnered with Bristol Sport to encourage fans to keep the stadium areas litter-free on big match days, including pre-match announcements.
Launched a targeted social media campaign including working with influencers such as The Anythink Show and the Plogman to reach our audience
Hubbub partnered with McDonald’s to introduce a trial of the LitterLotto® app that rewards responsible binning of any litter with prizes from £5 to £10,000. Through a free to enter Prize Draw, users can win regular spot prizes and huge jackpots.
The difference made
Bristol Waste recorded litter levels during the campaign via daily cart collections, but we faced the challenge of measuring a reduction due to the water content of the litter and bins being higher during winter months and wet leaves which would have increased the weight of collections. Anecdotally, the street sweepers said the area was less littered than the period the year before.
Hubbub facilitated the a partnership between McDonald’s and the LitterLotto® app which recorded:
34,542 items of litter binned
38% of items binned were by our target audience within LitterLotto's recorded age bracket of 10-29 year olds.
Through the trial of on-street recycling, across the measurement period (25 November 2022 to 3 March 2023), we collected 526kg of plastic bottles, cans and glass, with a contamination rate of just 14%. Where cup bins were placed next to recycling bins, we saw a 100% reduction of aluminium and glass contamination in the coffee cup bins which had been a problem previously.
The trial helped demonstrate the feasibility of recycling on-the-go in the city centre. Subsequently, Bristol Waste Company applied for an #InTheLoop grant from Hubbub, supported with funding from The Coca-Cola Foundation, to introduce more permanent recycling on the go. In summer 2023 24 new recycling bins across the harbourside area. In the first 3 months of the project, they collected 533kg of plastic bottles and cans.
