And the winner is our Waste Minimisation Team
On Wednesday evening (14th October) our Waste Minimisation Team were named the best team of the year at the UK’s national Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee Awards 2015.
The team were entered for this award after they met every target set for them in the 2014/15 Waste Prevention Action Plan (WPAP) and exceeded these targets in 6 of the 8 areas they were directly responsible for.
The team in 2014/15
- Sarah Ellis, Waste Minimisation Co-ordinator
- Roger St Paul and Samantha Gibbons, Waste Minimisation Officers
- Laura Wakeling, Events Assistant (April to September, 21 hours per week)
- Anna Glasser, Nappy Natters Assistant, 28 hours per month
Here are the reasons we believe they are the best team of the year:
Ideas, creativity and innovation
They identified and delivered a wide variety and number of projects and ideas including:
- #FlippinFoodWaste showing a brilliant way to use up leftovers,
- Second Chance Smoothie events using food that would otherwise have gone to waste
- Writing and publicised GetSwishing.com giving local groups all the information and resources they need to run their own swishing events
- Writing and recording the 12 days of Christmas video showing off the tricks of the waste-free elves at Christmas
The team is not afraid to try out new ideas and puts lots of enthusiasm in to them
Transparency
All of the work undertaken to achieve the targets is recorded and made public. Each quarter, reports are published on our website. Last year we presented on behalf of Wrap to representatives from Canada and South Africa regarding our LFHW campaign.
Flexibility and reliability
The team work closely together, they have skills which complement each other and know that when they need help other members of their team will be there. The majority of events attended are at weekends and part time members of the team have swapped hours to make delivery of these possible. The team is there for our residents, they will go when and where the residents need them and the requests for events and talks are constantly increasing.
Results
- The team designed, planned and delivered our saveaspud and saveaslice campaign resulting in over 12 million opportunities to see.
- The Nappy Natters Assistant organised 40 events promoting washable nappies. 698 people were spoken to and 50 trial kits given out on behalf of Harrow and Hounslow councils. Invitations were also received from Mothercare, Kiddicare and 3 local NCT groups to be part of their regular events.
- The team also runs WLWA’s communications. Through their work last year the number of visitors to our website increased by 26% and a host of new interactive features were introduced.
On social media we achieved a reach of just over 5 million with a re-tweet rate of 52%. This reach is double that of the year before.- Our target for attending events in this 12 month period was 50 events with 1500 people spoken to. The Team smashed this target and attended over double this, 123 events and spoke to 4031 people.
Value for Money
With only a budget of £300,000 for all staff and activities in 2014/15, the team were still able to make in-year savings of £30,000 whilst delivering results that exceeded expectations.
What our residents think
Here are just some of the comments from local residents and groups:
Pam, from Star Friends
Will you please convey our sincere thanks to Roger for his very good talk this afternoon. All my ladies really enjoyed it. His help with the raffle will never be forgotten.
Elizabeth, ACS Hillingdon International School
We appreciate your time and support yesterday. We learned a lot and hope it sparks some changes for our kids.
Valerie, Harrow residents group
Thank you so much for coming and giving all our neighbours such an interesting talk and presentation last evening. We all benefited from the tips, freebies, and general information given. You both mixed in so well with our group, in a very friendly way.
Natalie & Rachel, 2 cool 4 school
THANK YOU for coming and doing the session with the children they really enjoyed themselves it was good fun. They retained quite a bit of the information that you told them.
We’ve got time to give more presentations and visit groups over the next 6 months so please get in touch.
