"A weekly door-step recycling collection, I had no idea we could!" - Overcoming the local barriers to participation

In 1990 the UK Government introduced a 'challenging target of recycling 50% of household waste by the end of the century'. However, the success of loc al authority recycling programmes is reliant upon the participation of resi dents in the services provided. Traditional approaches (including leaflet d rops and newspaper adverts) to communicating local authority services to th e public have generally provided long-term educational benefits without off ering the necessary short-term gains required to achieve the UK recycling t arget. In an attempt to increase low public awareness and participation the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea decided that effective promotion, through a door-to-door communications strategy, was the only means availabl e to increase recycling tonnage and public participation in their doorstep recycling service. The Recycling Roadshow was launched to bring the recycli ng service and its message of 'reduce, re-use, recycle' to every doorstep i n the borough. This awareness campaign has increased average weekly recycli ng tonnage from 107 to 132 tonnes, and this success is attributed to greate r participation resulting from the promotional activities of the Roadshow a nd more effective participation with residents recycling a greater range of their household materials. Clearly the Roadshow is a useful additional mar keting tool, which conceptually marks a major rethink in the way that recyc ling is perceived, placing recycling at the heart of an integrated waste ma nagement strategy. The research suggests that this style of communication c an form a central and cost-effective approach to raising public participati on, and supportive data will be presented in this paper. The details of the programme, the Borough's decisions prior to and during the implementation of this programme, its impact and long-term success will be analysed in mor e detail within this paper. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reser ved.