As part of the campaign more than 405,000 households in four districts within Greater Manchester, UK are being directly targeted in the 12-week programme.
A first for this campaign is the segmentation of council districts within a major conurbation: The direct communication element of the programme, based on a two phase leaflet drop to every household and local roadshows, is focusing on four local authorities, Rochdale, Stockport, Manchester and Trafford. Whilst other elements of the campaign, including radio and press advertising, will extend across all nine districts in the R4GM area (1.1 million households). Another new element in this programme will see 15,250 households in the four districts targeted by a door-knocking campaign.
The 12-week campaign has been developed by MetalMatters and R4GM and is funded by R4GM (Viridor Laing), MetalMatters and the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP).
Rick Hindley, Executive Director of Alupro, said: “We are excited by the new approach that the Greater Manchester campaign is taking and we hope to learn a great deal about the impact and effectiveness of the MetalMatters messages across a major conurbation and, at the same time, in very specific areas, including those with a high percentage of multi-occupancy accommodation. This will be valuable as we aim to develop and refine the campaign to help more local authorities and waste partnerships realise the value of metals in their waste streams.”
Claire Shrewsbury, WRAP’s Packaging Programme Area Manager commented: “WRAP is pleased to support the running of the MetalMatters campaign for Greater Manchester. With this campaign’s ability to reach over 400,000 householders, we appreciate the huge opportunity offered from this collaborative project. WRAP hopes the community will positively engage with the campaign and recycle more metal.”
R4GM aims to increase metal packaging recycling by at least 10% in the four District Councils over the next 12 months with a view to using the MetalMatters campaign again in subsequent years to target all households in Greater Manchester. Meanwhile Alupro and R4GM will monitor the campaign with reports scheduled in three, six and 12 months’ time.
Pictured: Kate Ravenscroft (Communications Specialist, Novelis UK), Cllr. Nigel Murphy (Labour Member for Manchester), Valerie Leney (Project Manager, WRAP), Bob Hulley (Senior Waste Officer, Trafford Council), Rick Hindley (Executive Director, Alupro).