When Campbelltown City Council, New South Wales, received a grant to expand its kitchen caddy food recycling system to an additional 18,000 residents in July 2020, it wanted a different way to engage with the community and deliver the baskets.
Council’s Environment and Sustainability and Community Development Teams joined together to launch the #giveanhour project.
#giveanhour supports everyone who can to give one hour of their time to make Campbelltown an even greater place to live.
The kitchen caddies provided the perfect opportunity to launch the first #giveanhour project known as ‘Waste Warriors’.
In just over two months, Council had 193 registered Waste Warriors who provided over 1000 give-an-hours to assemble 18,000 caddies, pack 9000 caddies with compostable bags and information and deliver 9000 caddies to people’s front door.
Waste Warriors included children and families, young people, older people, people with a disability and community groups.
The success of the Waste Warriors was due a number of things including the ease of registering, and it allowed participants the flexibility of contributing as much or as little time as they liked and at different times including weekends, weeknights and daytime.
It had the added bonus of being practical and tangible with Waste Warriors seeing their achievements weekly, and people were motivated by the project purpose of reducing food waste to landfill.
This cross-Council team partnership with community created a new way of working together and positive engagement around the roll out of the new kitchen caddy system.
