A Stormwater Education Strategy for Salt Pan Creek

Salt Pan Creek, part of the Georges River catchment in Sydney's Southern suburbs, has an almost totally canalised (and seriously polluted) catchment.

We were engaged by Sydney Water and three councils to develop a 3-year education strategy to enable changes in community attitudes and behaviours in the Salt Pan Creek catchment.

We built a 'capacity-building' and 'peer education' model which aims to involve the community in achieving it's own aspirations for a better environment.

We delivered the strategy in June 2001, and a coordinator is expected to employed in late 2001.

'Clearwater Carnivale'

We devised and tested a series of big, fun, colourful, active games to bring home stormwater messages at festivals and school events. The process included thorough pre-testing and evaluation.
The games were launched on World Environment Day, June 5, 2001.

EcoLiving

Most environmental education programs tend to focus on single issues (Recycling, composting, stormwater etc) The result is a plethora of fragmented messages. This may mean that natural synergies between these issues are not being realised.
'EcoLiving' is a brand-based social marketing campaign being trialed in the Northern Sydney region.
The program was launched in May 2001, with a first phase evaluation due in October.
The initial program will consist of:

• an EcoLiving Solutions website with comprehensive 'how-to' information for residents on eco-solutions in the home, garden, workplace and community;
• an EcoLiving Guide (16 page colour DL);
• EcoLiving displays in councils;
• print advertising and editorial.

DeTox Your Home

Household hazardous waste avoidance has received little attention so far by waste boards and councils. It's an important area, since HHW collection programs mainly capture chemicals which have been stored responsibly and hence these programs may not be impacting on disposed toxics in the general waste stream.
There are also indications that 'toxic homes' is a sleeper issue which could emerge as one of the most valuable drivers of waste-related behaviour change in the community.
DeTox Your Home focuses on the personal and family health benefits of a less toxic lifestyle. The program involves:

• A DeTox Your Home booklet (16 page colour DL), containing 17 practical steps to a less toxic lifestyle.
• A local print advertising campaign (which uses the booklet as a satisfaction device to
• measure community response).

A multi-faceted waste education program

We were appointed to run the Northern Sydney Waste Board's total community education and involvement programs.
Our first major advertising campaign for the Board was 'Create Your Own Eden. Compost.' which raised the profile of home composting in Sydney's Northern Region. We also design and maintain the Board's user-friendly web-site .

Other resources designed for the program the popular series of 'Easy' guides to eco-living , a 'Shop lightly' display system featuring well-known squanderholic Godfrey Bigot (see right),

...and an attractive Eco-garden display panel...

Click here to see a readable version of the eco-garden display panel.

Country roads, city traffic

The ‘country roads, city traffic’ campaign aimed to persuade the residents in the city of Casey, who were angry at the poor road conditions, to become allies of the local council and help rally State Government for urgent and necessary funding.
The campaign successfully raised awareness of the issues and gained the support of residents who helped the council in its bid for urgent funding through community meetings, petitions and submissions.

What to do with ‘green waste’?

It’s not always easy to know what to do with leaves and grass clippings or ‘green waste’. So the City of Casey asked Social Change Media to find out what services the residents needed.
We developed comprehensive survey strategy to dig deep and get the information the council needed to make an informed decision. The results helped the local council to get the right solution first time.

Green Superannuation

In February 2000 HESTA super fund introduced the first environmental investment option to be offered in Australia – HESTA Eco Pool. Social Change Media provided the full range of communication and media services to encourage high member take-up of the new investment portfolio.

Community Gardens promotion campaign

The southern Sydney region is home to at least 12 community gardens. They are valuable community resources, especially for NESB residents, as well as natural venues for education about green waste and other issues.
This campaign involved developing a poster/brochure, on-site signage, and organising a successful community garden open day at the UNSW EcoLiving Centre.

EcoSmart Businesses

Businesses, especially small businesses, are vital targets for Waste Boards.
Working closely with staff at Illawarra Waste Management, we developed a comprehensive strategy for delivering waste reduction services and education to some 6,400 small to medium sized businesses in the Illawarra waste region.
The strategy includes branding, target audience analysis, drivers for change, relationship development, services, communication tools, staff roles and program evaluation.
Outcome: The strategy has been adopted by Illawarra Waste Management and is currently being implemented.

You can download a copy of the strategy from this site (1Mb PDF doc).

Who are the green hats?

One of the biggest challenges in business waste education is knowing how to market programs to potential early adopter businesses.
To find some answers we conducted in-depth interviews with key managers in 39 businesses which had previously participated in case study projects.
The results suggest that 'green' values are just as important as financial outcomes for early adopters. Hence culturally conservative, purely 'bottom line' marketing approaches are likely to miss this vital audience.
Outcome: The findings will be used to refine the style and approach of future marketing under the Waste Savers Brand.

You can download a copy of the study from this site (268k PDF doc).

Reaching NESB businesses

What is the best way to communicate waste reduction messages to small business owner/managers from non-English speaking backgrounds?
This study involved a telephone survey and focus groups with retail and manufacturing owner/managers from Chinese, Greek, Arabic and Korean backgrounds.
Results suggest that the obstacles to environmental improvement for these businesses vary little from those of mainstream businesses - lack of time, money, expertise and incentives.
The study focuses on opportunities for better communication between Waste Boards, councils and NESB businesses.

The Easy Septic Guide

Poorly maintained septic systems are a significant source of pollution in NSW waterways. We produced this illusrated, reader-friendly community guide on the care and maintenance of septic systems - now being distributed widely through councils. Click here to download a copy.

Less waste in our place

A comprehensive community education program for the new wastre contract. Involves concept, pre-testing, householder info kits, displays, media and advertising.

A user-friendly Earth Works manual

We produced Down to Earth - an easy-to-understand, highly illustrated manual for the well known Earth Works program.

A comprehensive internet strategy for the NSW EPA

Our sister agency Social Change Online developed an 'everything on the web' internet strategy for the EPA, which took advantage of state-of-the-art web technologies such as distributed authoring, intelligent searching, automatic generation of contextual data to give meaning to individual items of information, easy creation of audience-specific web pages, and syndication of data to local government and other agencies (for instance, to provide automatic map-based data-sets for SOE reporting).

A 'big picture' waste education strategy for NSW

We recently completed a 'big picture' community education strategy for the NSW Waste Boards, focusing on schools, householders, and council staff. We reviewed best practice, nationally and internationally, and made recommendations on ways to tighten the coherence of the overall 'waste education task' in NSW.

A model stormwater education campaign

One of our first decisions was to empower the community to help design the campaign, and school students have been involved in delivering materials and messages to the community.
The project involved mobilising local school students to deliver stormwater information and a free tea-towel to all residents in one catchment in Iron Cove. Illustrated signs were also placed along popular walking paths.

Here is the 'collectors' item' tea-towel (the idea came from the community meeting), and one of the cartoons we developed for the project.