Community Engagements Effect on Circular Economy

A circular economy – the saving grace or simply unattainable? A circular economy can be defined as a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible. And glass is the perfect material for this. But how do we take the circular economy from being sustainable future idealism that is seemingly only applied to big businesses, to a practical concept that can be built into our everyday lives?

We worked with Zero Waste Leeds, who are building a movement to make Leeds a zero-waste city by 2030, to dig deep into how the circular economy can be made attainable within local communities.

Building Importance

A large amount of the current narrative revolves around the education of how larger corporations or industries can become more circular, ignoring the undeniable force of the general public. So, the big question is how can a circular and more regenerative economy be made more relevant to people’s lives?

A feeling of care needs to be introduced to build a real movement. Both nationwide as well as within local communities, to put the spotlight on education as to why a circular economy is so vital to our futures.

Loving Locality

The best first place to start is with campaigns within the local community. Zero Waste Leeds are a great example of how local campaigns can make a brilliant difference, with projects such as their local school uniform exchanges and notably the recent city-wide glass recycling campaign. The campaign involved a searchable glass bank map, sharing of useful tips and information and local community engagement.

The Campaign

Conducting research into local habits and behaviours gave insight into the reasons many people don’t recycle, ranging from customer perception of glass banks to the lack of transparency around what happens to their recycled glass bottles. So, it was decided that the campaign should have the following themes:

• Congratulatory
• Practicality
• Informative
• Interactive & Responsive

Local groups were engaged with to encourage the redecoration of three community bottle banks by young volunteers in areas with low recycling rates, this was done to tackle some of the main concerns people had of bottle banks being dirty and tricky to find. The newly decorated banks were unveiled at local community events which were designed with recycling education in mind, incorporating fun and interactive games.

Community Engagements Effect on Circular Economy

Results

This local engagement proved to make a huge difference with there being a 43% increase in glass collected from the newly improved sites, not to mention the amount of coverage received, including:

• 239,705 social media impressions
• 72,000 residents reached through LCC Nextdoor
• BBC Look North Feature

Choosing to keep campaigns like this local allow for more specific pain points to be identified and addressed. The engaging nature of the project also gave the communities a reason to want to be involved, helping to raise awareness. You can read the full wash up report here.

Looking to the Future

It’s clear to see that local community engagement can have a ginormous effect on building a circular economy. At Verallia we are dedicated to working both on our internal practices but also within the local community to aid in building positive behaviour changes. Find out more about our sustainability targets by visiting our Sustainability page. And if you are looking to collaborate on future projects, please do not hesitate to contact our team.