Three Rivers District Council Case History
Helping Three Rivers Council to save a million Tonnes of food! 
The objective of most of Big Stick’s creative work is about boosting the sales of growing commercial companies, so the opportunity to flex our creative muscle in helping protect the environment was a refreshing change. Recycling and the potential damage to the environment is an issue particularly close to our hearts in these days of climate change.
It is not the first time Big Stick has worked on a recycling project, it has worked for Dacorum, Aylesbury Vale and Three Rivers Councils on more than one occasion and each time the results have been good. None more so than in a 3 Rivers Campaign during 2007-2012 which reduced food waste by 21% which amounts to a million tonne saving! (thats 23 million wheelie bins!)
It seems we are all accustomed to recycling plastic, glass bottles and paper but we have been slower to commit to recycling food. Largely due to perceived problems storing the waste food and concerns about it potentially attracting insects and rodents especially in the summer months. However, these concerns have been assuaged by the introduction of the food pod, which is a convenient container, kept in the kitchen to
collect and store our waste food. It also has a lockable handle so once stored in a biodegradable plastic bag within the food pod, it is secure and safe from insects or rodents until it’s collection on a weekly basis.
The impact of NOT recycling wasting food is potentially catastrophic in terms of the harmful gasses that are produced. A message expressed strongly in our first campaign for Three Rivers supported by this fact…If we all stop wasting food it would be equivalent of taking one in 5 cars off the road!
A brief to get our teeth into…
When Jennie and Alison at Three Rivers Council briefed us in November 2015 their message was simple…
“We want people to feed their food pods!”
As they explained…”We throw away 7 million tonnes of food and drink waste 50% of which was perfectly edible and costs the government £12.5 billion
(or each household £700 a year for a family of 4), not to mention the huge damage to the environment.
So if we need to ensure everyone puts waste food in their food pod and gives a little more thought to the portions of food they cook, particularly
things like pasta, potatoes, rice etc that people often misjudge quantities when cooking for the whole family.”
Since it was families we were aiming at primarily we looked at the typical family with 2.2 children and a dog! So using a baby in one poster and
a cute puppy in the other seemed to be a solid tactic! We wanted the message to be warm and appealing not to scare the reader but to relate to them
and get them to recycle more as part of their family routine. The key message was that if food is recycled it is NOT WASTED. It can be used to make
fertiliser to grow new crops and even provide power for our houses. We also included an action point as a sign off to download a free recycling App at
www.lovefoodhatewaste.co.uk which, included a food portion calculator to help take the guesswork out of cooking large quantities (of pasta for example!)
The final result is a message which is focussed and practical, the large images are impactful and engaging, so that with frequency of viewing the residents of the
Three Rivers Council area will take on board positively the routine of food recycling. Look out for these posters on waste collection vehicles in the Three Rivers
region and lets hope they help save another tonne of waste food!
*The Project from initial concepts to final artwork was completed within a month by Big Stick with Agripa charged with producing the artwork to vehicle poster size. 
Big Stick would like to thank THREE RIVERS DISTRICT COUNCIL for it’s support and guidance during the project.
