Between March 2022 and February 2023, environmental charity Hubbub and Wychavon District Council, with support from Worcestershire County Council, delivered Food Savvy – a communications campaign to help Wychavon households reduce food waste at home.
The campaign promoted three simple behaviours (planning, storing and using leftovers) across:
We used fun and playful messaging to inspire people to make simple changes every day.
Supporting our residents to reduce their waste, particularly food, is a priority for Wychavon District and Worcestershire County Councils.
A staggering 35% of everything thrown in the average black bin in Worcestershire is food and more than two thirds of that food is edible.
This is wasteful for so many reasons. It is a waste of the water and energy that has gone into producing food that is simply thrown away, damaging to our environment and contributes climate change.
Food waste also costs Worcestershire County Council £5 million a year to dispose of. And crucially, it costs families in Worcestershire an average of £60 a month. That’s money that is desperately needed by people right now, during a cost-of-living crisis.
The frustrating thing is reducing food waste isn’t complicated, but many of us still do it.
Working with Hubbub, our aim through the Food Savvy campaign was to reach as many people as possible with fun, simple, engaging tips and support.
When we started this campaign, we never thought we would change the world in just 12 months. Behaviour change at scale can be a long process. But what you will see in this report is that when we inspire people with the right messaging at the right time, it has an impact.
The challenge for us now is how we can continue to promote the Food Savvy message and reach even more of our residents, to help them save money and support our planet.
Ian Dipple Head of Marketing and Communications Wychavon District Council Emma Stuart Waste Prevention Manager Worcestershire County Council
120,616 total reach on social media
307,108 impressions on online adverts
1,240 parents and pupils reached through the ‘Tasty Toastie’ Competition
Over 14,000 people reached by the Food Savvy film
351 people saw the Food Savvy installation
93% of people reported that they wasted less food after taking part in the Food Savvy Challenge
Our playful social media campaign spanned across Wychavon District Council’s social channels and website. The content included tips and inspiration. We themed the content to create a buzz:
Summer
Christmas
Back to Savvy (back to work & school)
Halloween
Use Your Loaf (bread waste)
Freezer Savvy (encouraging freezer use)
• 120,616 total reach on social media
• 4.48% engagement rate on social media in January 2023 for the Freezer Savvy theme
• 1,481 visits to Food Savvy web pages
• 1 minute 44 seconds average time spent on Food Savvy web pages. Significantly higher than the average of 1 minute 30 seconds for the Wychavon website
• 3 minute 16 second average dwell time on Freezer Savvy web page
• Short themed campaigns throughout the year helped audiences stay engaged as we focused on specific actions or food types.
• Cost saving tips tapped into what motivates people to take action during the cost of living crisis.
• Paid-for advertising and boosted posts helped to promote content and spread messaging to people who did not follow council social media channels.
Food Savvy sprung up all over Wychavon. We worked with Wychavon Council to spread the word through:
• Council owned refuse vehicles
• Printed adverts in local newspapers
• Online adverts on local news websites
• A digital board at Sainsburys petrol station
Impact:
• 15 refuse vehicles with attention grabbing Food Savvy messaging provided 133 hours of exposure every week
• 41,432 opportunities to see Food Savvy newspaper adverts in the Evesham Journal and the Bromsgrove and Droitwich Advertiser
• 307,108 impressions through online adverts
• 150,000 viewed out-of-home digital adverts
• Paid online advertising was the most effective of all our communication channels and allowed us to target people who might not otherwise see the content.
To talk to young families about food waste and how to beat it, we ran the Tasty Toastie competition for schools, youth groups and early years providers.
The competition was part of the ‘Use Your Loaf’ mini campaign. In it, organisations were challenged to submit a ‘menu’ of breakfast, lunch, and dinner toasties created by the children. To incentivise entry, the top three menus were offered cash prizes.
The toastie theme helped us to get people thinking about bread waste. 20 million slices of bread are wasted in the UK every day.
• 1,240 parents and children were reached with Food Savvy messaging through the competition
• 8 local organisations submitted entries to the Tasty Toastie competition
• Engaging with schools, youth groups and early years providers helped promote messaging directly to young families.
• A flexible ‘how-to’ guide for organisations running the competition helped lower the barrier to entry.
• The timing of future competitions needs to be worked around the school calendar with schools given even more time.
• The impact and reach of future competitions can be boosted by PR and press appearances.
We put the fun into beating food waste by creating a stop-motion film for social media, cinema and TV.
Our aim was to:
• Encourage action by showcasing simple behaviours to reduce food waste
• Entertain audiences to promote discussion and sharing of the film content
Using hand-crafted puppets and stop-motion animation, the film told the story of ‘the Avons’ – a fictional local family who had reduced food waste and saved money by:
• Planning their meals
• Storing their food correctly
• Loving and eating their leftovers
Impact:
• 14,000 people reached through Sky, or 83% of the entire Wychavon Sky audience
• 120,000 impressions through Sky, outperforming our target of 118,000
• 8.5 – the average number of times Wychavon households viewed the film on Sky
• 1,750 people viewed the film at council-run open air cinema events
• Sky advertising proved effective in targeting households exclusively within the Wychavon area.
• Our partnership with a creative, high quality filmmaker allowed us to develop the film collaboratively, ensuring the film stuck to Food Savvy messaging whilst being innovative and playful.
Wychavon families got involved in ‘The Food Savvy Challenge’. We inspired them to make simple changes to reduce their food waste and heard more about what inspires them and makes it harder to do this. We invited families to a closed Facebook group. The challenge encouraged people to reduce their food waste and then inspire their friends, families, and neighbours to do the same.
Over four weeks, we provided tips, hacks and inspiration drawn from behaviour change theory. Each week focussed on a different theme with new activities.
Live-streamed cook-alongs
Foodie competitions with great prizes
‘Ask the expert’ with local chefs
Top tips and waste busting hacks
“I’m loving this group and have been inspired a few times already.
I’ve set up a recipe/meal board on Pinterest and have started saving the ends of my bread for pudding. This weekend I made a big batch of stuffing balls to freeze. Thanks for the motivation.”
Sophie, group member
“I enjoyed the live cooking demonstration. I’ve found tips cards useful such as the one about what can be frozen and what can’t. I thought I was quite clued up, but I learned a lot.”
James, Wychavon resident• 72 households took part in the challenge and completed the final survey
• 93% wasted less food
• 54% spent less money on food
• 165 people are in the Food Savvy Squad Facebook group, as of April 2023
• Peer-to-peer conversations helped to boost learning about food waste.
• Prizes such as soup makers and bento boxes encouraged participation and engagement.
• Accessible, simple, and playful language helped to boost engagement.
• Worcestershire Council have now taken over moderation of the group with a team of volunteers. We know that groups like this require regular content to inspire people to continue to take part.
We ran Food Savvy Challenges with council staff.
“Late to the game with this one but we made ‘Bitsa Bruschetta’ for dinner last night. All completely from leftovers. The bread wasn’t fresh enough for sandwiches but was great toasted with garlic and olive oil.”
Wychavon District Council employee
“Food Savvy is a fantastic initiative that everbody should take part in. It’s something for the longer term and I’m looking forward to continuing on this journey of being more food savvy!”
Worcestershire County Council employee
• 70 Wychavon District Council staff took part in the challenge, with 55 returning the end of challenge survey
• 55% waste less food, 45% waste the same
• 76% spend less money on food, 24% spend the same
• 132 Worcestershire County Council staff took part in the challenge and 86 completed the final survey
• 80% waste less food, 20% waste the same
• 38% spend less money on food, 62% spend the same
• Running the challenge between colleagues helped to build a natural sense of community around the challenge.
• Staff who did not post online or fill in the survey would still engage with council officers face-to-face, showing that a lack of online posting was not necessarily reflective of a lack of engagement.
• Experimentation showed that the challenge could easily be adapted to other platforms (e.g., Teams and Yammer).
We created an interactive kitchen installation to get the word out on the street.
This was displayed at the Pershore Plum festival in 2022 and will be used by both Wychavon District Council and Worcester County Council at future events such as CountryTastic, Worcester Show and Three Counties Show.
• 350 people got involved with the installation at Pershore Plum Festival
• The interactivity and playful design of the installation engaged families and children in Food Savvy messaging.
• Reusability of the installation gives it potential to be displayed at future events.
• Food Savvy messaging could be further promoted by adapting the installation (or creating a new installation) for indoor use.
