A CITY WITHOUT WASTE? IT’S POSSIBLE

Auckland Council has an ambitious goal: engage every Aucklander to help our city become zero-waste by 2040.

Working to become a city without waste isn’t easy and involves many moving parts. Everyone has to do their bit to reduce their impact on our environment and to protect and enhance our beautiful natural assets for future generations.

One important step is phasing out plastic rubbish bags in favour of wheelie bins across Auckland, to empower Aucklanders to reduce their household waste. Sound like an easy switch? Not for everyone. So we decided to tackle our largest community first.

In 2017, more than 110,000 homes across south and east Auckland received a new red-lidded wheelie bin. Meeting the customer service delivery schedule was a large scale and complex operational exercise in itself, without upping the stakes by adding a challenging behaviour change - how to motivate every home to switch from throwing out unlimited black plastic bags each week to fitting their family’s rubbish into a standard 120L bin?

Enter the single-minded proposition: ‘Let’s Bin the Bag’.

‘Let’s Bin the Bag’ gave everyone an opportunity to change the way they think about their rubbish. Executed as a threephase creative and visual communications campaign translated into six languages across digital, social, print and broadcast channels, it had to help a large and diverse cultural community clearly understand what was changing. Supporting the new customer experience through advice and support via digital and community engagement was at the heart of the campaign. In particular: • Marketing communications focused everyone on “Make the Most of Waste’, a customer-centric one-stop information

hub with an engaging customer journey. • A team of community engagement ambassadors interacted directly with customers in their local spaces, events, parks, community centres and homes. • A dedicated 24-hour free Community Helpline was launched to give advice to anyone struggling with too much rubbish and to report illegal dumping. And the results? Research showed 76 percent of respondents had seen the ‘Let’s Bin the Bag’ campaign, with 94 percent knowing exactly what was changing and 88 percent knowing what they needed to do.

In the first few weeks of the new wheelie bin service, more than 100,000 homes put their new wheelie bin out on the kerb and only five percent of rubbish was in plastic bags.

Manukau ward Councillor Alf Filipaina acknowledged the important environmental and safety benefits, “Rubbish bins are the better environmental choice, they keep our streets cleaner and safer for everyone”. Marketing and Publicity team, Auckland Council