Hey! Why didn’t I think of this? Here’s a light-hearted environmental communications effort that has it all — it’s clever, cute, crystal clear, and dirt cheap! It’s the “Caught Green Handed” campaign run by the Lawrence-Scioto Solid Waste District in Ironton, Ohio.
Every few weeks, district staff head out to local recycling trailers and snap pictures of everyday citizens who use them properly. Then they post their pictures to the website, saying they were “caught green handed.” Here’s how it stacks up to the method:
- Step One: Begin With Behavior: Check! Recycle.
- Step Two: Foolproof Photos: Check! There are those recycling do-gooders, staring right at you with bags of recycling in their hand
- Step Three: Swap the Shoptalk: Check! No shoptalk anywhere
- Step Four: Words That Work: Half check. The district never uses the term “doing your part” or “working together,” but that message comes through pretty clearly with the effort
Big thanks to S.W. for slipping this one my way!
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Their model of randomly rewarding the behavior they are trying to reinforce seems like a great idea.
I also like their use of pictures show that lots of people are recycling.
I wonder though if there is not a different photographic shot that they could take. When I first saw the photos, I actually thought they were photos of people putting trash in a dumpster as opposed to recycling.
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