plastics and recycling, the impact that consumers and residents have, and how we can address some of that. As a council, we want to assist all our residents to be part of the process of change. Whether it is behavioural change or attitude change, whether it is through more public engagement, or pilot projects, we want to be able to drive change. We have linked in with Alison Stowell and Maria Piacentini through PPiPL, and for more than two years we have attended workshops where we had producers, suppliers, consumers, and processors involved. We have gathered a lot of insightful information. Getting the different perspectives from consumer groups, the suppliers and retailers in terms of what they might want to see has been useful. It has also given us a better understanding of our limitations, because we are not the waste disposal authority. We are governed by the county council in terms of how we operate and what services we can provide. We are carrying out kerbside collections, which then go on to processing plants, and there are limitations with that, with regards to what plastics we can collect and what materials we can collect. Sharing that information is key to how we move forward and make some improvements in terms of our service. We have been able to share information regarding our internal processes and how things work from a local authority perspective, particularly with those kerbside collections, recycling, and the public engagement work we do, and see where we can build the education of residents to assist them and encourage them to recycle more and more appropriately. NEW CONVERSATIONS A lot of residents would say that looking on our website, it says we can collect bottles marked two, three and five. What does that mean to people? That ambiguity is still there for a lot of people. This is why we need to give clearer messages, so that residents do understand. We need to give tangible examples – ‘that is a shampoo bottle’, for instance. It is about being clear, but a lot of the messaging is still quite confusing for people. There has always been an awareness of that, but PPiPL has magnified it for us, and ultimately shone a spotlight on where we can make valuable improvements to our communications with residents. Our involvement with PPiPL has generated conversations about how we could have more innovative approaches. Whether they are achievable and feasible is a different matter, but it is about looking at how we adapt some of our engagement opportunities and having more visibility to residents to support them. We cannot do it without them. We ran a trial on Windermere Park, in Heysham, where we rolled out new, bigger wheelie bins. We currently use recycling boxes, but a lot of the other county regions use wheelie bins. We were trialling 240-litre bins with 1,000 residents. The major result from that was because of the improved capacity, we could change the collection profile from a fortnightly collection of recycling to a monthly collection. We held workshops with the University where residents could come along and talk about recycling, and how the trial was going. It was a success, but budgetary constraints mean we have been unable to expand the project. We are actively encouraging people to purchase these wheelie bins where they can – paying the administration and delivery fees – and a number of local residents have done that and have seen a real benefit. POSITIVE OUTCOMES PPiPL has been invaluable for us. We cannot obtain some of the levels of data we have had access to without working with partners like the University. The researchers get into the minutiae and have time to study the behaviour-attitude gap. We see national reports on recycling and waste disposal behaviours, but working with PPiPL really helps us look at the local area and what is happening for us. It shows us we are not any different from other local authorities. Being involved with the project makes you think about how we can maybe improve things. We have been working with PPiPL for a couple of years now. It has been great taking the time to go through the reports that were generated. There have been some invaluable nuggets that we can take away and utilise. We hope there will be future benefits in terms of improvements not only for our operational delivery of services, but also being influential in changing people’s behaviour and perception around the importance of the use disposal of single-use plastics in their daily lives. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 25 Carly Sparks is the Public Realm Improvement Lead at Lancaster City Council. Ian McKay is Operations Manager with Lancaster City Council. Lancaster City Council are partners on the Plastic Packaging in People’s Lives (PPiPL) project. The council encompasses the city of Lancaster, as well as areas of Morecambe, Heysham and Carnforth, providing services to around 140,000 people.
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