Love Your Forest | 2019 Impact Report | Hubbub

PA P E R C U P C H A R G E Can adding 5p to the cost of disposable cups encourage the use of reusable coffee cups?

Love Your Forest I M PAC T R E P O R T 2 019

W W W. H U B B U B . O R G . U K

Love Your Forest INTRODUCTION

Each year 250 tonnes of rubbish is removed from the Forest of Dean, costing local taxpayers £430,000 per year to clean up. Since 2016, Love Your Forest has been exploring ways to tackle littering in the area, and has built a campaign that: • Engages with a cross-section of the community • Builds on the pride people have in the forest • Emphasises collaboration locally

Love Your Forest was created by Hubbub and is delivered in partnership with the Lucozade Ribena Suntory, Forest of Dean District Council, Forestry England, Foresters’ Forest, Wye Valley & Forest of Dean Tourist Association, and local co-ordinator Glenn Redwood.

Love Your Forest 2019 AMBITION

Following on from the refinement of the Love Your Forest campaign activities in the first 3 years, Love Your Forest 2019 focussed on: • Replicating the most successful elements of the campaign, making adjustments where necessary.

• Handing over the campaign to the partnering organisations.

• Building a plan for broadening the impact of the campaign outside the Forest of Dean.

I M PA C T

33

community events

1.3 million press reach

9

school visits

21

articles

29

2,371

552

scout & guide groups involved

people took part

bags of litter collected

354,502

92,948

48,699

Twitter reach

Instagram reach

Facebook reach

THE TRASHCONVERTER Our very special horsebox spent its second year travelling the Forest of Dean, offering people the chance to swap litter for treats.

This year the Trashconverter visited 9 schools, 17 community events and several Foresters’ Forest litter picks, resulting in 552 bags of litter being collected.

This year we also introduced some high value treats to exchange for bigger litter picks. These were Love Your Forest branded tote bags, water bottles and reusable coffee cups to strengthen the environmental message.

LITTER C R E AT U R E S The Litter Creatures were created to raise awareness on the issue of littering in high footfall areas within the forest.

They build upon the successful elements of the previous Love Your Forest art installations: ‘Communitrees’ and ‘Litter Critters’.

The Litter Creature trail consisted of four large animals made by a local artist from litter picked by scout and guide groups, and the mountain biker made from litter from the previous year’s campaign. They were placed at popular picnic spots and walking areas around the forest and we ran a competition to win a family canoeing trip by visiting each of the creatures and unlocking the secret code.

The trail received high engagement on the Love Your Forest Facebook group. The 7 posts about Litter Creatures had 263 likes, 36 shares and a reach of 23,228. The creatures were seen by many people across the month, with a combined footfall of over 69,000 people*. However, the trail competition received no entries. This could have been because the prize wasn’t appropriate or desirable enough.

It was also reported that not having a pen provided at the point of picking up an activity sheet was a barrier. People might also have been put off by Newent Lake being a much further away spot to visit than the other locations. *Footfall is calculated by Forestry England for Beechenhurst and Cannop Cycle Centre. The other 3 locations that hosted the creatures weren’t Forestry England sites and therefore don’t measure footfall.

The actual numbers of people who saw the creatures will be higher.

SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT The school visits have continued to be an integral part of the Love Your Forest campaign. These include the option of a talk, a visit from the Trashconverter, a Litter Critter making workshop, the litter poster competition and a visit from forest animals.

This year the Trashcoverter engaged 1203 school children, collecting 73 bags of litter. The litter poster competition received 130 entries and out of these, 4 winners were chosen to have their designs on waste collection vehicles and the runner up designs were printed on mugs.

The council has reported that the programme has given it access to schools it had previously found difficult to reach.

One school class wrote a letter to Glenn, our local coordinator, thanking him for the Litter Critter workshop and expressing how much the class had enjoyed the session and how it had made them think about waste. “Thank you so much for coming to our school and making the litter bugs with us. Everybody thought it was so creative to make something so nice out of what was considered trash.� - excerpt from the letter.

SCOUTS & GUIDES Following the success of the Love Your Forest badge with the Scouts in 2018, this year the programme was rolled out to Guide groups as well.

Scout and Guide groups receive a talk about the impact of litter on the forest by a Love Your Forest team member and can earn their badge by: • Carrying out a litter pick with the Trashconverter in attendance.

• Talking to others in the community about what they have learned.

• Coming up with ideas to reduce litter in the Forest of Dean.

This year 7 Scout, Beaver and Cub groups and 22 Guide, Brownie and Rainbow groups earned their Love Your Forest badge, equating to 382 children and 83 leaders and adult helpers taking part.

CAR STICKER COMPETITION The Love Your Forest car sticker was available at 58 local outlets in 2019. The sticker was designed to be displayed as a badge of pride, using social norming to encourage people to also take pride in the forest.

Car sticker holders were spotted by Love Your Forest group members and their registration numbers were entered into a prize draw to win enticing prizes such as a visit to a local attraction, vouchers to a local shop, or a zero waste picnic kit.

The prize winners were announced in the Forest Review alongside an article about Love Your Forest. This encouraged people to check the article to see if they’ve won, and in doing so learning more about Love Your Forest.

This year 377 unique car registrations were spotted, 16 winners received prizes and 8 articles were published.

In 2019 the group found it was more difficult to source prizes in comparison to previous years and fewer people were interested in claiming their prize.

However, the high number of registrations spotted this year indicated there is still desire to display the sticker, even without the incentive of entering a prize draw.

Therefore, in future years the car stickers will still be distributed but the competition will discontinue.

LITTER-FREE PICNICS On International Picnic Day we ran a social media competition, encouraging people to send in their tips for having a litter free picnic, with the incentive of winning one of two litter free picnic kits worth approximately ÂŁ80.

Alongside the competition we promoted the zero-waste picnic guide and vlog to encourage more people to have litter free picnics.

The competition received 8 entries, with 3 winners chosen, and had a Facebook reach of 2947.

LITTER PICKING Foresters’ Forest and Forestry England continued to run local litter picking events around the forest, offering local people the opportunity to get involved in the campaign and contribute towards clearing litter from the forest.

The Trashconverter attended many of these events to provide rewards for litter pickers, and regular litter pickers were offered a Love Your Forest tote bag, reusable cup, or reusable water bottle as a reward for their hard work.

Foresters’ Forest ran 14 litter picking events in 2019, engaging 139 people and collecting 319 bags of litter.

GUIDE & RESOURCES To enable others to replicate the campaign, Hubbub created a “How-To Guide� with step-by-step instructions on how to create a Love Your Forest campaign.

This included a resource pack with downloadable campaign material templates.

The guide has been read 253 times on Issuu.

In 2020, Hubbub will share learnings with local authority and business contacts to encourage further usage of the guide and possible expansion of the campaign.

W H AT ’ S N E X T ?

As a result of the learnings across 4 years of Love Your Forest, the next phase of the campaign will:

• Introduce a recycling on the go scheme based on learnings from Hubbub’s # LeedsByExample campaign.

• Build upon and improve the most successful campaign elements, including introducing a school Litter Creature making competition and scaling back the car sticker element of the campaign.

• Continue the handover to the community, with the litter campaign being fully co-managed by the stakeholder group, with Hubbub leading on the recycling element of the campaign.

• Seek to expand the campaign to other locations in the UK, encouraging uptake of the how-to guide and resources.

TH A NK YOU W W W. H U B B U B . O R G . U K / L O V E -Y O U R - F O R E S T HELLO@HUBBUB.ORG.UK R E G I S T E R E D C H A R I T Y N U M B E R 11 5 8 7 0 0