Press Release: Under embargo until 00:01, Friday 21st July 2023
Barbie or Oppenheimer? Ballot Bin campaign tells public it’s time to #PickYourSide in new campaign to reduce litter
New bins have hit the streets of Southampton and Manchester, encouraging the public to vote on hot topics such as Barbie vs Oppenheimer, Liam Gallagher vs Noel Gallagher and Scott Mills vs Craig David, in a bid to reduce litter in UK cities.
The #PickYourSide trials, established and designed as part of a partnership between environmental charity Hubbub and KFC, have seen new Big Ballot Bins set up in Manchester and Southampton city centres, as part of a project to tackle litter.
The new Big Ballot Bins are the first of their kind, using solar-powered sensors to detect and count which option the public vote for as they throw away their rubbish, with digital screens keeping track of the score.
Hubbub and KFC are not only encouraging the public to do their part and throw away their rubbish, but also to share their opinions on the questions via social media using the hashtag #PickYourSide.
From Barm vs Muffin, to Love vs Money, the bins are already stirring up debate and going viral online. The questions will be in place for four weeks, when we’ll get a whole new set of hot topics to get people going.
The campaign will coincide with the peak of summertime, with litter often becoming a more visible eyesore at this time of year and the latest figures1 show that the UK is spending £1 billion to clear 30 million tonnes of litter each year.
Gavin Ellis, Director and Co-Founder at Hubbub, commented “Since we created the Ballot Bin voting ashtray back in 2016 and saw it successfully nudging smokers to bin their butts, Hubbub has wanted to test the same approach with litter bins. We’re always looking for creative ways to reduce littering and we hope the new Big Ballot Bins, which are built based on proven behaviour change principles, will do just that. We’ll be tracking the impact they have through independent, scientific measurement”.
Jenny Packwood, Chief Corporate Affairs & Sustainability Officer and Interim CMO, KFC UK & Ireland, said “Litter is an eyesore and is bad for the environment. We all hate to see it, and we take our responsibility to reduce the impact of litter in our communities very seriously. That’s why this pilot scheme using behavioural insights to test new approaches to tackling litter is an exciting next step for us. We want to play our part to find real solutions that work for the public.”
The impact of the bins and campaign will be assessed by local partners and independently measured by environmental tech company Ellipsis Earth who will use artificial intelligence to identify and scientifically measure changes to litter levels around the bins. This data will help determine the impact of the bins and assess whether using Big Ballot Bins could help other city centres and locations tackle litter too.
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NOTES TO EDITORS
The Big Ballot Bin was created by Hubbub and Instrument Industries – the manufacturers of the original Ballot Bin. Interested in the Big Ballot Bin? Click the following link to find out more - https://www.hubbub.org.uk/pick-your-side/
ABOUT HUBBUB
Hubbub is an award-winning creative charity that inspires action that’s good for the environment and for everyone. Our aim is to revolutionise communications with the public about environmental issues – forming unique collaborations across business and communities, and using behaviour change techniques, everyday language, and good design to make environmental choices desirable and more possible. Hubbub’s work taps into topics people are passionate about and can create big impact such as food, fashion, our homes and communities. Hubbub won the Charity of the Year Award in 2020 and Best Social Media Presence in 2021 at the prestigious Charity Times Awards.
Since 2014, Hubbub has delivered more than 154 trailblazing environmental campaigns in collaboration with over 2,500 partners, helping to shift the national debate on key environmental issues such as food waste, sustainable fashion, reuse and sustainable diets. Hubbub’s campaigns include #InTheLoop which initially brought together 25 of the UK’s largest companies to boost recycling on the high street and through a replicable tool kit has now expanded across seven cities, a 3-year partnership with IKEA to create the world’s largest customer-facing sustainability campaign ‘Live LAGOM’ and creating a network of over 450 (and counting) Community Fridges across the UK which, in 2022, shared 16.9 million meals worth of surplus food over 1.2 million visits.
www.hubbub.org.uk
Twitter: @hubbubuk
Facebook: @HubbubUK
Instagram: @helloHubbub
LinkedIn: Hubbub-UK
ABOUT KFC
In 1952 Colonel Harland Sanders opened the first KFC restaurant in Utah. Since then, his perfectly crafted Original Recipe chicken and its secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices has become famous all over the world, and today we have over 900 restaurants across the UK and Ireland.
The Colonel was all about doing things the right way. That means our chicken is delivered fresh from farm to restaurant in 48 hours. It’s prepared carefully by hand in-restaurant by trained cooks, using the very best chicken reared to strict welfare standards. In July 2019 we took the next big step in our welfare journey and signed up to the Better Chicken Commitment, a set of six criteria that have been designed to improve the lives of all chickens within the KFC supply chain, by 2026. That’s what makes our food so finger lickin’ good.
The right way also means serving fresh proper food, packed with flavour. So, we’ve worked hard to make nutritional improvements across our menu, so our fans have as much choice as possible, and we’ve committed to removing 20% of calories per serving by 2025.
The Colonel also believed in feeding promise, wherever it’s found. So that’s why we invest heavily in the development and careers of our 27,000 employees – we were the first restaurant to launch an honours degree. And since its 2015 launch, our KFC Foundation has paid out grants totalling £5 million to our charity partners who are passionate about developing and nurturing young people across the country.
To find out more about us visit https://www.kfc.co.uk/behind-the-bucket/litter, or follow the Colonel on Twitter @KFC_UKI and Instagram @kfc_uki.