The unprecedented collaborative campaign has been shortlisted for both partnership excellence and campaign of the year
#LeedsByExample launched in October 2018 and saw Ecosurety and behaviour change charity Hubbub join forces with with brands, retailers, recyclers and a local authority to trial a range of innovative ways to improve rates of recycling on-the-go.
The reason for the campaign focus on recycling on-the-go is because whilst home-based recycling rates have steadily increased over the last few years, recycling on-the-go figures have not. It is a significant problem as we collectively get through 2.5 billion coffee cups, 13 billion plastic bottles and 9 billion drinks cans each year.
The collaborative campaign has been shortlisted for two categories at the National Recycling Awards, which for the last 20 years have recognised and celebrated those making a difference in the recycling and waste management industry.
Hubbub along with 26 funding partners, Leeds City Council, Zero Waste Leeds and 29 local partners have been shortlisted in the Partnership Excellence – Public/Private sector award. Meanwhile the campaign itself has also been shortlisted in the coveted Campaign of the year – above £20k category.
Support from big brands
The campaign secured the support from a raft of big brands and trade associations, including Alupro, Asda, Association of Convenience Stores, Ball Beverage Packaging Europe, British Plastics Federation, Bunzl, Coca-Cola GB, Costa, Co-op, Crown Packaging, Danone, Highland Spring, Innocent, Klöckner Pentaplast (kp), Lucozade Ribena Suntory, Marks and Spencer, McDonald’s, Morrisons, PepsiCo UK, Pret A Manger, Starbucks and Shell. The campaign was also supported by WRAP and OPRL.
An impressive spread of new recycling points were installed across the city, and combined with in-store take back of coffee cups #LeedsByExample ensured that consumers would be no more than 5 minutes walk from a recycling point. The full #LeedsByExample impact report is available to read here.
Importantly the legacy of #LeedsByExample extended far beyond the city, with two further cities following suit and building on the key learns from Leeds shortly afterwards, albeit under the new name of #InTheLoop - Swansea which brought the first on-street coffee cup bins to Wales and Edinburgh, which previously had no on-street recycling bins at all.
The National Recycling Award winners will be announced on 15 December 2020.
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You can find out more about our impact projects here, and if you would like to work with us too, please contact our team.
Ben Luger
Marketing projects specialist
Ben joined the team at the beginning of 2015 and helps drive marketing communications and projects for Ecosurety, including project managing the launch of the Ecosurety Exploration Fund and website content development.
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