Talking rubbish: the uphill battle to rebrand trash

By IRENE CHAPPLE

The neighbourhood rubbish collector's image is tarnished.

It's not seen as an endearing trade, unlike the friendly neighbourhood postman, or lucky chimney sweep.

But a conference in Christchurch today, attended by a high-profile assortment of waste reduction agitators, holds the key to achieving pin-up status for wastemen - among other things.

Branding strategist and part-time star of the waste industry firmament Brian Richards leads the charge on rebranding rubbish.

Undoubtedly, waste has an image problem - and there is no brand to save it.

Unlike the Smokefree movement, or the anti-drink-drive campaign, the campaign to reduce waste has so far been a fractured effort waiting to be pulled into a cohesive movement.

The Waste Management Institute of New Zealand (WasteMinz), which has organised the conference, claims it will glue the groups together and provide practical forward movement for waste reduction.

The conference has attracted some big guns.

While repositioning waste's image is the key topic, Environment Minister Marian Hobbs will provide an update on the Government's waste minimisation and management strategy. European economist Dr Dominic Hogg will debate the economics of waste minimisation and New Zealand environmentalist Guy Salmon will look at environmental reporting by waste companies.

Almost 300 delegates will receive a highly stylised booklet detailing targets for waste reduction. This is the result of a $70,000 project instigated by WasteMinz after last year's conference, and researched by environmental consultant Jim Bradley.

The four aims detailed in the booklet - an implementation team, a national campaign, an education programme and individual benchmarking - are worthy, all-encompassing, and, so far, slightly fluffy.

The marketing requirement has been to produce "a Government-led and funded nationwide campaign to change the national psyche and the way we act."

Mr Richards was pulled into the fray last year, and has worked on his Life After Waste project intermittently since. He plans to make waste reduction sexy through branding.

When asked how, he gets coy. He wants to keep those ideas to himself, for now. Eventually, he offers a slide show of images.

They are stark and effective.

Photographs have been taken around Auckland. One, on Fort St, has a condom in the foreground, discarded on a heap of rubbish. The neon lights of massage parlours provide the backdrop.

"Safe sex ... safe water," it reads. Get it? The condom is heading towards Auckland's harbour.

Next image - a cigarette, close-up, the Civic sign arched in the background. "75 minutes," reads the bold font blurb. That's how long it would take for the cigarette to get into the harbour.

The images, so far, are being used only to galvanise conference delegates. These images may be seen in the media over the next year, depending on funding and Government reaction to the ideas raised.

Mr Richards said the public would also be hooked by using guilt and embarrassment. He quotes Mark Twain: "Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to."

He sees a future when litterers are scorned and humiliated by their peers.

And the wasteman, of course, will get a public perception makeover. Mr Richards suggests the use of "Dusty" as a term of endearment.

But there is no hint of how much such a campaign would cost, or how it would be paid for.

Mr Richards and WasteMinz chairman Allan Goddard say a successful campaign needs the same attention as, for example, the Smokefree campaign.

That campaign was driven by then Health Minister Helen Clark, was blasted ahead with the Smoke-free Environments Act 1990, and carried through with the legislative implementation of the Health Sponsorship Council.

While the council's statutory role is to promote health and encourage healthy lifestyles, executive director Iain Potter said 80 per cent of the $4 million received from the Government every year was targeted at the Smokefree campaign.

Mr Potter credited the budget for its initial success. Unsurprisingly, campaigns to change the national psyche cost big cash.

The Government is making positive sounds toward Life After Waste.

Ket Bradshaw, manager of the Ministry for the Environment's pollution and waste group, said while WasteMinz was attacking individual responsibility, the Government was targeting top-level clout.

Local and central government will present their final waste management strategy early next year.

Decisions on funding the strategy and WasteMinz's initiatives have not been made yet. Any funding application would have to go through the normal budget round, from the middle of next year.

Ms Bradshaw said WasteMinz initiatives complemented Government aims. But she warned that campaigns such as these could take years.

Key targets to garner support for the campaign are local and central government, the education system, corporates and the public.

Initiatives such as Enviroschools, BusinessCare and triple bottom line accounting are also gathering momentum.

The Enviroschools programme was piloted in 1993 by the Hamilton City Council and the Hamilton Community Environmental Programme. From 1997, the programme was developed further, encompassing eight schools. It is now funded by the Zero Waste Trust and its local coordination funded through councils and community trusts.

Spokeswoman Heidi Mardon said the aim was to get children passionate about the environments they learned in. The focus was on creative rather than rules-based learning and putting responsibility for cleaning up in the kids' hands.

BusinessCare, launched this year, is a charitable trust championing waste minimisation. It is working with a three-year cashflow of $600,000 from the Ministry for the Environment and $50,000 from Industry New Zealand. There is also contribution from the Zero Waste Trust.

The trust works with local councils offering advice to smaller businesses.

It also encourages triple bottom line accounting - the concept of businesses reporting on social and environmental results, not just financial.

Massey University corporate citizenship lecturer Colin Higgins said that although this was still seen with some scepticism, the concept had moved from a fringe activity to a mainstream one as high-profile corporates including Telecom and Shell climbed on board.

Today's conference is attempting to bring all threads of the glibly termed zero-waste campaign together.