Year Three Activities

This section illustrates the ongoing and one-off activities that helped Norfolk and Suffolk residents become more #FoodSavvy across Year Three.

The campaign provided ongoing core digital communications including:

Food Savvy website

www.foodsavvy.org.uk: Packed with practical tips, recipes, and videos for cutting waste while eating well.

The Food Savvy Quiz: Identifies ways for participants to cut waste based on their responses.

The Food Savvy Challenge

A month-long emailbased challenge offering tailored support to help households cut waste.

Year-round social media messaging

Messaging and assets for our campaigns including Pumpkin Rescue, Travellers Check, Community Fridge, Banana Drama were shared across Suffolk Waste Partnership, Norfolk County Council and Hubbub social media.

In addition, we ran a savvy calendar of one off events, installations, and activities from September 2020 to September 2021.

September #FoodSavvy Newsletter Competition

We kicked off Year Three with a month-long digital competition which aimed to increase the number of sign-ups to our Food Savvy newsletter. The competition ran from the end of August through to the end of September with great results.

Impact:

The total number of subscribers over the short competition came to 508, 278 were local. This nearly doubled the number of people who signed up to the newsletter.

2,500 visits to the website with the competition page being the most visited page. We now have 1,000 plus subscribers for the newsletter. Building up our following is part of our Year 4 strategy.

Learning:

A selection of food saving prizes proved a good incentive for people to participate in the competition. Making sure the ask was simple and clear was key to ensuring that those who saw our social media posts followed through and took action to sign up.

Due to its success, we will look at running the competition again. To ensure more sign ups next time we will put paid ad spend behind posts to reach a greater audience. with a focus on local engagement.

October #EatYourPumpkin (Pumpkin Rescue)

Every year a spooky number of Halloween pumpkins end up uneaten in the bin. The Pumpkin Rescue campaign shows simple ways to help people eat their pumpkins. We focused this year’s campaign on how to have a spookily safe, sustainable Halloween at home. Activities included fun ways to get kids involved, recipes for simple and delicious pumpkin dishes, live cook-a-long sessions with chefs and our first pumpkin competition.

Impact:

An increase in reach and followers to the Food Savvy social channels.

Over 1,200 page views of the Eat Your Pumpkin campaign page and pumpkin recipes, and a significant increase in the amount of time people spent on the website.

Learning:

The hashtag #EatYourPumpkin provided focus for social media activity.

We had a lot of well received content and we can build on this in the future.

Focusing on kids’ activities brought families together to carve and eat their pumpkins, especially the Live Facebook session with Chef Nena Foster and her children.

November #MilkSavvy

6.7 million pints of milk are thrown away across Norfolk and Suffolk each year – equivalent to 148,000 bathtubs full! Venturing into new territory, Food Savvy Norfolk made a splash across Norwich Castle with our first ever light installation.

Impact:

Media opportunities to see 4.8 million. The campaign featured on TV News Anglia, Greatest Hits Norfolk & North Suffolk, That’s Norfolk TV, Heart Norwich, Planet Radio and Pollution Solutions online.

19,008 people saw the installation across the three nights it was live. 624 people stopped to watch the full reel and/ or ask questions.

Social media reach, 111,391 and 29 contributors on Twitter & Instagram. This resulted in 56 newsletter sign ups and 419 visits to the campaign page on the Food Savvy website.

The #MilkSavvy installation was created in partnership with Ulf Pedersen

Learning:

Creative and highly visual installation which trialled new ways of bringing our Food Savvy message to life with content that can be used again.

The installation had a low carbon footprint, which meant no waste, no materials to transport and very little resource needed on the ground to run it. Using existing infrastructure and equipment reduces complexity and cost as well as picking a location which already had high levels of security.

Opting for a light installation allowed us to engage the public on the ground at a time when gathering with others outside of our households wasn’t possible.

December #SavvyChristmas

Christmas 2020 looked a little different for most people due to the pandemic, and our messaging reflected this. We encouraged people to try something new which would save money, time, reduce waste and bring people together.

With people planning for smaller Christmas celebrations, Food Savvy content focused on flexibility. We inspired people to make creative homemade presents, ran a festive competition, helped people to plan ahead, and gave tasty ideas for leftovers. Inspiration for creative homemade presents came in the form of ‘the gift of taste’ including jam and chutney recipes and a few sweet treats for good measure.

Impact:

1,000 subscribers received the #SavvyChristmas newsletter.

800 local people visited the website. And the most popular pages were the #SavvyChristmas page, Christmas recipes and the gift of taste pages.

Learning:

The #SavvyChristmas competition didn’t receive as many entrants as other competitions. In Year Four we will ensure the ask is even more clear and simple.

Social media was awash with messages from businesses in the lead up to the big day, with many putting large paid ad spend behind messages. For Christmas 2021, we’ll explore putting paid ad spend behind star pieces of content to make sure our Food Savvy content has greater impact.

January Driving Down Waste: RCV #FoodSavvy Makeover

2021 Campaigns

Food Savvy Suffolk explored different approaches to getting our messaging out on the ground. We considered ways to meet people where they were, and for many of us at that time, this was at home. We created playful, eye-catching signage for 25 refuse collection vehicles (RCVs) in Suffolk, focusing on the big waste items: bread, milk and bananas. Using the trucks allowed for a direct link to be made between food waste and the use of household bins.

Impact:

The newly made-over trucks have been making tours of local neighbourhoods since January 2021.

Learning:

The assets and templates are now designed, meaning we can use them again or share and utilise on other platforms. It was beneficial to keep them as timeless as possible to ensure longevity.

The RCV trucks proved to be a worthwhile trial in exploring messaging options outside of social media. We will explore ways to assess whether seeing the messaging helps people to make changes in their own homes.

March Food Savvy Unlocked

90% of us changed our food habits and 35% of us cut food waste during lockdown.* Food Savvy Unlocked was a digital campaign to help people to stick with these new food behaviours. Residents shared their ‘savvy lessons from lockdown’ with the pull of a competition to drum up interest.

The campaign launched alongside Love Food Hate Waste’s (LFHW) first #FoodWasteActionWeek. Using this as a hook to showcase how local people were acting on the wider global food waste issue allowed the campaign to get great traction and be picked up by local businesses.

Impact:

Food Savvy Unlocked received high engagement across our social media channels, with 282 mentions and a reach of two million. This led to significant increases in followers across both FoodSavvySFK and FoodSavvyNFK social channels.

We saw a 36% increase in web visits on the previous month and time spent on the website increased.

*State of the Nation’s Plate, How Covid-19 restrictions are changing how to eat. Hubbub Foundation, March 2020

Learning:

Capturing and sharing people’s stories during lockdown helped to connect people at a time when many were feeling isolated.

Building the messaging around insights gained from Hubbub’s 2020 polling where we asked how COVID-19 has changed people’s eating habits shaped our messaging. Our call to action was clear, simple, and built on positive food management behaviours whilst gently outlining the need to ensure that these habits stick.

Eating what’s in season and not dismissing frozen fruit and vegetables has helped keep the variety in what we eat. I’m enjoying making my food go further and am proud to do my bit for the environment.

James, Hollesley, Suffolk

June

Home Run - The Kitchen Edition

We inspired workers with tricks and tips to help them wave goodbye to waste. Colleagues were encouraged to compete in a range of fun food challenges. Games, a cook-along, pledge making and food discussions all aimed to bring teams together (online). We ran a trial with Suffolk County Council and Norfolk County Council colleagues with an aim of scaling what worked well.

Get in touch if you would like to discuss opportunities to partner on a campaign for your organisation.

Impact:

Whilst take up for Home Run could have been higher, those who took part found the content engaging and beneficial.

I enjoyed discussing ideas and sharing thoughts/ information with people leading the session and others.

Home run participant

I enjoyed the hands-on elements. Chef Nena was sharing great hints and tips.

Home run participant

Learning:

Restrictions had begun to ease by the time we were reaching out to businesses, and the session didn’t feel as relevant as many returned to the office. This is a reminder that contexts can change rapidly (even outside the pandemic), and we need to be agile and responsive.

At a time when many were becoming tired of home working and experiencing online fatigue, it proved difficult to recruit participants and motivate them to spend more time looking at a screen.

The session was held at lunchtime. Perhaps having the session before or after a Team meeting would have generated higher sign ups.

August

The Street that Saved

The Street That Saved was a month-long campaign, challenging two streets in Norfolk and Suffolk to go head-to-head. 20 households were given tools and bespoke support to reduce food waste in their homes. Participants attended challenges and joined a Facebook group which hosted quizzes, motivational content and a live cook-along.

Two launch events kick started the month of activities in Lowestoft (Suffolk) and Thetford (Norfolk). There were opportunities for all participants to meet and ‘unbox’ their food saving kits, have a cycle on a smoothie bike, take pledges from a banana tree and have a go at a few food saving games.

While there was different engagement between the cohorts, the campaign provided us with lots of learnings and insights into residents’ food behaviours in their homes. We built on community links in the area and participants then went on to be ambassadors and share what they learnt.

Impact:

The winning street made an average saving of £40 and 5.6kg per household, per month. That’s the equivalent of £485 and 67kg per year.

The story was shared by BBC Radio Suffolk, BBC Radio Norfolk, BBC Look East Evening News, Planet Radio. ITV Anglia, EDP online, Fakenham Times, Dereham Times, Wymondham and Attleborough Mercury, North Norfolk News, Norfolk County Council and East Suffolk Council.

I am now more mindful of food waste - the first week was really bad the last week much better! We had leftovers for dinner last night and I also made a big batch of soup and froze at least half of it.

April, The Street That’s Saved Contestant

Learning:

Prizes helped incentivise engagement, and county rivalry spurred camaraderie and a little healthy competition. Having two streets competing in opposition served as a good media hook, increasing uptake in the story and interest by the public.

When engaging with new audiences, a clear message is really important. This will help to ensure that participants know exactly what they need to do.

To deliver again we would need to provide for more face-to-face engagement from the start.

A dedicated closed Facebook group helped keep the conversation alive, although this was resource intensive.

September East Suffolk Cooking Workshops

Supported by Connected Communities we worked in partnership with East Suffolk Council and Suffolk County Council to run four cooking workshops led by Food Savvy influencer and local Chef Emma Crowhurst, who supported 20 elderly people to reduce their waste, learn new skills and meet others.

Over half of participants told us they had learned a food saving skill or behaviour during the session.