City tries to up recycling rates with new marketing campaign
An empty plastic bottle rolls through a downtown street, past snowy mountains and a tumbleweed-filled desert before being deposited into a blue recycling bin. The final image is a beige bench made of recycled materials overlooking the sea and this message: Give your garbage another life.
The video is part of a national recycling campaign that will soon air in the Austin area — in both English and Spanish — over the next five months as part of an effort to improve recycling rates.
“It’s a positive, uplifting message. We need to show the public that there is a positive outcome of recycling,” said Bob Gedert, director of Austin Resource Recovery, the city’s recycling and trash department. “It’s not a chore.”
Austin’s “diversion” rate — the portion of discarded items that go toward recycling or composting instead of the trash bin — has plateaued at 40 percent after rising from 30 percent in 2008. City officials have set a goal of 50 percent by 2015 as part of the city’s “zero waste” initiative. Ultimately the city wants to prevent 90 percent of trash from reaching landfills by 2040.
Austin’s recycling goals are modest compared to other cities. San Francisco has achieved an 80 percent diversion rate. Portland is at 70 percent and San Diego isn’t far behind at 68 percent. Though in Texas, Austin is doing better than Houston, which has a diversion rate of 19 percent.
The campaign will cost the city $300,000, most of which goes toward purchasing TV and print advertising. But Gedert says it’s a bargain because the city didn’t have to pay for production of the TV spot.
The city is partnering with Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council to — well, recycle — an existing national campaign to fit with Austin.
Lynn Markley, a senior vice president at Keep America Beautiful, says they will conduct a study in the Austin area to determine if the marketing campaign is effective.
“The perception is we are green and therefore we are meeting the standards,” Gedert said. “But we actually need to take more action to be green. We’re not there yet.”