As part of Logan City Council’s ‘Watch Out Waste’ Education Program, EnviroCom recently held a community composting and worm farming workshop at a new community garden in Beenleigh. During the two hour workshop, attendees were provided with the information required to set up, maintain, and troubleshoot compost and worm farm systems. Participants were also introduced to the idea of waste minimisation, and the problems associated with sending organic waste materials to landfill. These community workshops are held throughout the year, and are always well-received by the community.

To help them achieve this goal, EnviroCom conducted a professional waste audit at three main sites in August to identify waste composition and provide insights into how each site could reduce their waste to landfill. EnviroCom delivered presentations to staff in all departments at each of the sites to help employees better understand their waste, and learn how their specific site can better manage their waste.

Approximately 60 waste education stakeholders came together for the workshop, to discuss the current state of waste education in Queensland, along with the existing opportunities and challenges for implementing waste and resource recovery programs in Queensland schools.

A variety of group discussion and facilitation strategies were employed for the workshop to gather meaningful and valuable feedback from participants to inform the design and development of a four year waste and resource recovery strategy. Incorporated in the group discussion and facilitation strategies was the engagement of, and collaboration with, a graphic recorder. The graphic documentation of the main discussion points was incredibly valuable for post reflection and synthesis of key ideas and recommendations arising from workshop participants’ contributions.

Resources, guidance, advice, and training will be provided by EnviroCom’s team of experienced Environmental Educators to engage centres in investigations of on-site waste issues, which will inform the development and design of sustainable, appropriate waste management solutions.

Considering and adopting the principles of behaviour change, this program will empower participating centres to achieve long term results in regards to sustainable waste generation and disposal behaviours.  This approach will result in a reduction in waste generation, encourage centres to avoid and minimise disposal of general waste to landfill, and promote reducing, reusing, and recycling.

This program will provide support to centres to assist them in meeting or exceeding their sustainability accreditation requirements as outlined in the National Quality Standards. The Waste Smart Kindy Program is available to all Early Learning Centres, Childcare Centres and Kindergartens within the Logan region.

If you would like more information on Logan’s Waste Smart Kindy Program, please email our team at: loganwe@envirocom.com.au

In 2018 the Kids in Action theme ‘Changing Climates – Changing Lives’ focused on the implications of climate change both locally and across the globe. The theme asks students to consider how humans and other species are adapting to climate-related changes and what the opportunities are to build resilience and inspire positive change.

The 2018 program saw 277 students from 23 different schools, 110 adults and 27 community groups participate throughout the year. The first event of the program was the KIA Environmental Projects Day, held at Point Cartwright Reserve in April. The day involved 8 interactive environmental activities designed to inspire the students to think creatively about how they could approach the KIA theme and connect the students with local mentors to assist on their journey.

With the assistance of the KIA team and local mentors, schools busily began creating and developing their workshop, main stage presentation or interactive display to share with other schools at the Kids Teaching Kids Conference in September. The conference saw 16 workshops, 6 main stage presentations and 7 interactive displays including topics such as ‘Love Your Food!’, ‘Be Fashion Conscious!’, ‘Trees have feelings too!’ and ‘#EarthRights’. Main stage presentations were delivered from 6 schools and involved ‘The Clean Water Rap’, ‘Consequences’ and ‘Re-bag! Changing Bags, Changing Lives’. Kids in Action 2018 successfully wrapped up in October with the KIA Roadshow event where 4 schools set up their interactive displays for 4 days at Kawana Shopping World to engage the broader community.

The KIA Program is highly successful, but don’t just take our word for it, checkout the videos on Council’s website to see what the students and other participants thought about their experience with the Kids in Action Program.

The City of Sydney implemented a Food Scraps Recycling Trial in 2019 as one of many initiatives designed to work towards reaching the target of ‘Zero Waste by 2030’, the long term goal of Council’s ‘Leave Nothing to Waste’ strategy. The Trial aims to reduce residential waste to landfill by providing residents in multi-unit (MUDs) and single-unit (SUDs) dwellings with an easy-to-use food scraps collection service.  Registered participants were to be provided with a benchtop kitchen caddy and a supply of compostable caddy liners to assist with easily collecting food scraps in the home. A total of 53 MUDs and 330 SUDs were to be included in the Trial, which will run for 12 months from the 1^st July 2019.

EnviroCom was engaged by Council to host ‘information stall’ pop-up events in a sample (20) of the participating MUDs ahead of the rollout of the Trial. The information stalls aimed to provide residents with a face-to-face opportunity to receive clarification around the purpose and logistics of the Trial (including the environmental benefits of food scraps recycling); to answer resident questions; and to encourage residents to register for the trial if they hadn’t previously done so.

Over 500 people were actively engaged across two full weekends of pop-ups and almost 90 new households signed up to the Trial. The vast majority of residents engaged demonstrated a high level of enthusiasm and support for the service and were particularly excited to hear that the food scraps would be used to create renewable energy, in addition to being converted into a high quality compost.

In April, EnviroCom was invited by the Melbourne Waste and Resource Recovery Group (MWRRG) to present at their toolbox workshop on, ‘How to develop and deliver your FOGO Community Behaviour Change program’, which was attended by more than 80 representatives from local Councils.

In May, EnviroCom attended the Waste 2019 Conference at Coffs Harbour and presented a paper entitled Waste Education- Time for a Rethink that acknowledged that while education is undoubtedly a powerful tool for community engagement and community change also questioned whether there is a need to reconsider the approach to waste education in light of recent events within the industry.

In May, EnviroCom also attended the inaugural Cleantech Conference on the Sunshine Coast and delivered a presentation that demonstrated how strategic, timely and targeted education can have a positive influence on community behaviour change, regardless of the industry sector.

In October, EnviroCom will attend the WMRR 2019 WasteQ Regional Waste Management Conference in Toowoomba and will present on a range of projects including: a Beach Litter Project that showcases the powerful role of community engagement in effective litter management and litter source reduction; Let’s Go FOGO- a project that considers how understanding and addressing behaviour change drivers can have a positive impact on diversion rates of food materials into FOGO; and, how targeted bin inspection and educational intervention programs are having a noticeable impact on driving positive waste diversion behaviours at the household level.

In October, EnviroCom will also be attending the Victorian Waste Education Conference in Geelong to present on the processes, challenges and outcomes of developing a FOGO Behaviour Change Implementation Plan and Business Case on behalf of three regional Victorian Councils as well as showcasing the successful ACT Green Waste Service as an example of how targeted and strategic community education and engagement has resulted in high rates of community participation, negligible contamination and high customer satisfaction.

And, not forgetting, that back in February EnviroCom was voted number 1 outright for ‘Education, Training and Community’ in the Inside Waste Consultants survey as voted by our clients and customers.

Historical composition analysis and observations from the Councils indicated that the FOGO kerbside collection service was primarily being used for disposal of green waste materials while a majority of food waste materials continued to be presented to the red-lidded general waste bin.

To assist in addressing the relative underperformance of the FOGO kerbside collection, the Councils commissioned EnviroCom to undertake a project to consider the opportunities for a behaviour change approach to community education. The project adopted the principles of behaviour change and Community Based Social Marketing (CBSM) in the development and delivery of a multiphase project that was delivered between May 2018 to June 2019 and comprised three phases:

• Phase 1: Research Phase- undertaking regionally specific research (May – August 2018)
• Phase 2: Intervention Phase- considering, developing and trialling educational interventions to achieve changed behaviours (September 2018 – March 2019)
• Phase 3: Review and recommendation phase measuring and assessing the changed behaviours and developing a Behaviour Change Implementation Plan (BCIP) (April – June 2019)

The overarching objective for the BCIP was: ‘To eliminate the presentation of food waste materials to the residual waste stream’ and was supported by six critical and interconnected behaviour change drivers as identified during Phases 1 & 2 of the project.

The BCIP included a detailed and strategic 3-5 year action plan. The deliverables presented in the action plan framework centred on a range of community engagement approaches and tools designed to address the behaviour change drivers and meet the needs of the target audience. The action plan also included KPIs and a robust evaluation, monitoring and assessment system. The BCIP was supported by a business case for expanding and sustaining changed FOGO behaviours in the target communities.

• Equip Whittlesea households with information and tools on how they can reduce their household waste and improve their recycling
• Measure the success of undertaking a targeted education and engagement program on behaviour change.

The ‘Whittlesea Waste Busters’ program involved participation by ten volunteer Whittlesea households in a targeted community engagement and education program. The program included pre and post program household waste audits; two community workshops; a four week ‘waste challenge’ and the provision of a waste minimisation ‘starter kit’ to each participating household.

The pre and post program audits were used as both an evaluation tool and an opportunity to directly engage residents on their waste and recycling behaviours. EnviroCom conducted each audit at participant’s houses, either on their front lawn or driveway. Wherever possible, the audits took place when a resident was at home, to allow participants to observe the audit process, ‘face’ their household waste and learn from observations through first hand engagement with EnviroCom consultants. Following the audits, each household was provided with an individual report, which discussed their waste and recycling generation behaviours, the composition of each waste stream and identified opportunities for improvement.

Audit results were presented at the workshops, so participants could gain a further understanding of how their household was performing in relation to others. The workshops provided an opportunity to discuss the results of each audit round in detail, identifying successes and opportunities for improvement, and allowing participants to ask questions.

A self-evaluation activity was also used at both workshops. Participants were asked to evaluate their knowledge and understanding of waste and recycling following their participation in the ‘Waste Busters’ program. The self-evaluation activity showed that residents had improved their knowledge and understanding of how to reduce waste at home and how to improve their household’s recycling. All participants indicated that they enjoyed the program and would recommend it to others.

As a collective, participating families significantly reduced their generation of both garbage and recyclable material between the two audit rounds. Garbage generation decreased by 70.85kg and recycling generation decreased by 25.72kg demonstrating that targeted community engagement at the household level can have a positive influence on waste generation and recycling behaviours.

EnviroCom Australia (EnviroCom) was engaged by Council to develop a Waste Management Plan (WMP) and a 5-year Improvement Plan to guide on-the-ground sustainable waste management for the Bronte Park / Beach areas. The development of the two documents was to be informed by a combination of site assessments, consultation and desktop research to inform a robust evidence-based WMP.

The resulting document provided best practice recommendations around three key areas of waste management operation, being: community behaviour / engagement (user behaviours around presentation points); material handling (movement of waste and litter by staff); and onsite storage and waste collection.

The 5-year Improvement Plan mapped out deliverables in the short term (year 0-1), medium (years 2-3) and longer term (years 4-5), stepped out to create a staged approach to upgrading waste management infrastructure and supporting signage.

A third document was provided to Council which collated the research findings relating to behaviour change through carefully considered infrastructure, signage and message; bin configuration, size and type; and litter minimisation measures.