Recycling Resources For All Ages

The N.C. Division of Environmental Assistance and Outreach has three social marketing campaigns to promote recycling. Social Marketing is the use of commercial marketing techniques for projects that benefit society. Each of our campaigns is described below.

Recycle Guys

North Carolina adopted the Recycle Guys campaign from South Carolina for North Carolina elementary and middle school children in 2000. It includes an activity book, commercials, posters, stickers, tattoos and trading cards. They are a very cute group of characters that sing and dance.

RE3.org

The RE3.org campaign kicked off in 2005 for high-schoolers, college students and 20-somethings. Original funding for the creation of the campaign was through an EPA grant. The campaign includes bottle openers, commercials, posters and T-shirts. This campaign may differ from other recycling campaigns in that it uses different messaging, graphics and media outlets.

Recycle More NC In 2010, DEAO embarked on a new campaign called Recycle More NC for the 35-year-old and older demographic. The goal is to not only increase the amount of curbside recycling, but also increase recycling participation at work and while out-and-about.

These campaigns are available for use by all North Carolina local governments and nonprofit agencies for free. Other out-of-state organizations are able to use the RE3.org and Recycle More NC campaigns once they complete and receive a signed Memorandum of Understanding from DEAO. The Recycle Guys campaign can be adopted from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control.

DEAO partners with both public and private organizations on the sponsorship of the campaigns.

All three campaigns can be found on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

Thanks for Visiting Our Booth at the NC State Fair!

By Kristen Aubut

Thanks to everyone who came to visit us at the Environmental Assistance and Outreach recycling booth in the GreenNC tent at the N.C. State Fair! We enjoyed hearing the recycling experiences of our booth visitors. We got some great questions about curbside recycling, the separation process of recyclable materials, accepted materials in your community and much more. We hope you learned a lot about waste reduction during our daily stage shows. We appreciate everyone who took the America Recycles Day pledge and our recycling survey. Check our Recycle Guys Flickr page or our RE3.org Flickr page to find the photo you had taken with Can Guy or the new RE3 avatar. We’ll see you next year at the N.C. State Fair! Keep reducing, reusing and recycling!

RE3 Avatars Debuted at State Fair

In early May, Chelsea Amato and I, freshly arrived and excited about our internships, were given the task of reviving RE3.org’s identity, with Annie Hah, an intern already in the division. Something “never seen before,” as our supervisor Kelley Dennings described. RE3 is a recycling campaign developed a few years ago by the former Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance (now the new Division of Environmental Assistance and Outreach).

So we had at it. It took us a while to understand what exactly was wanted and also needed. We researched various recycling programs aimed at RE3’s demographic. We researched all the possible cultures and drew up concepts, but didn’t come up with much material that would help us. Mid-summer, all the interns met in our little intern office and just spit out ideas. We had good ideas, bad ideas and copycat ideas. Eventually, we all came up with guidelines that we felt would work.

1. There would be a thought bubble connected with an anthropomorphic shape. This thought bubble would have to be able to be placed in various positions, spray painted, stenciled and be seen at extra small and extra large sizes.

2. The shape connected to the thought bubble would be a human-like form, but not a photo. The RE3 “Kenny Campaign’” done a few years ago had a lot of impact on this decision. The African American student, named Kenny, in the original RE3 campaign was a paid actor. He was in some of our commercials, posters, truck ads and on our web-site but we couldn’t hire him to do events and new advertisements each year.

Chelsea, Annie and I set to work. All this was concurrent with other duties, so it took awhile to finally deliver a product. The week before our fall semester started, we met with Kelley to present our ideas. We decided to refine and adjust the ideas. We then sent out a survey asking for feedback on two versions of the possible Avatars and their thought bubble counterparts. Combined with the survey responses and further Kelley refinements, we came to what I present today, the new RE3.org Avatars. The thought bubble is a simple shape, easy to draw and cut out if need be. Pleas or urgings to recycle would be placed inside it. At times, sarcastic or apathetic remarks would also be placed in the thought bubble, with the tagline “go recycle” underneath. We did this to help the viewer understand the lack of sincerity in the words inside the bubble and aid them in recognizing the importance of recycling.

The Avatar was a tough item to come up with. We didn’t want something too generic, so our shapes had to be somewhat different. These are designed to be recognized by the RE3 demographic but not too culturally biased as to represent one specific subculture within that age group. We designed the two characters to also be easily placed in different positions (throwing recyclables into the bin, biking, etc).

These new Avatars will be unveiled at this year’s State Fair. If you walk around and see them by recycling bins or chalked out on the ground, take a photo and tell us via Facebook, Twitter or Flickr. Mention us and we’ll post it up on our pages. Help us get the word out about our new Avatar. Also, when you go by the Green NC area and visit our station at the NC State Fair, you could get your picture taken with a RE3.org Avatar and thought bubble. But that’s not all. We’re going to have a lot of cool interactive exhibits and you can learn a bit, too. We’d love to talk to you. Any questions or comments, please stop by the fair or leave a note!

See you at the Fair!
- Jonathan Stephens

The new skinny on Search Engine Optimization

Guest Blogger – Jonathan, Graphic Design intern for DEAO

Below are some tips from Jonathan to increase your search engine optimization.

During the past months, I’ve been researching how we can improve our Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) on RecycleGuys.org, RE3.org and RecycleMoreNC.org. S.E.O. is optimizing how well search engines find and query our websites. They have “crawlers” (kind of like little web spiders) looking at our content and images, finding what’s relevant and trustworthy and what’s not depending on someone’s search.

When you author blog posts, make sure that the information stays consistent and dependable. The title of the post should be catchy and valid to the post. Important words need to be bolded or italicized (however, this doesn’t mean bold or italicize everything, but only the important things. It’s like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, if everything is deemed as important, nothing will be).

When you post images, they should have an alt tag (this is a verbal description of the image read by the computer for people who have images shut off on their websites or may be blind) as well as title tags, and all need to be relevant to the image content. Even the name of the image needs to be relevant. For example, a picture filename of a MRF shouldn’t read “DRZ_0289.jpg,” it should read “sonoco-mrf-2010.jpg,” or something to that effect.

Through my research, I also found some new news in the world of S.E.O. Most people aggregate their information via Twitter, Facebook and blogs. They aren’t as dependent upon search engines as they once were. Twitter is one of the world’s most popular sources for news. Links get shared and “liked” constantly via Facebook. Basically, whenever you write anything or make any announcements, you need to post them onto Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, really wherever you can.

When we create anything new, we need to make sure the general S.E.O. requirements are upheld still, but the social networks have become a force to be reckoned with!

Recycling on the Go - #binhere

Guest Blogger – Clare Estes

We’ve recently started promoting the “recycle on the go” message. It’s the next step in our push for citizens to recycle no matter where they are. But we’re aware that convenience is a huge factor for people to recycle. For many, if there’s not a bin in sight, their empty bottle or can goes right into the nearest trash receptacle. No amount of RE3.org key chains, visits from Can Guy or puppy dog eyes that we flutter can change that.

We’ve come up with an idea to help North Carolinians on the go find a bin nearby. It involves one of our favorite social media sites: Twitter (If you’ve not realized by now, we’re social media addicts. If you need a social media catch-up, check out a few of our webinars here.

We’re using the #hashtag function to help people find a bin. If you’re unfamiliar with the #hashtag purpose in Twitter, it’s used to group together tweets or conversations of a similar topic. For example, during most of June the #worldcup #hashtag was very popular. If you had anything to say about the World Cup on Twitter, you could include #worldcup in your tweet and it was added to the millions of other tweets about the World Cup. Or, if you were interested in what the Twitterverse was saying about the World Cup, you click on a #worldcup #hashtag and read the tweets of anyone who included “#worldcup“ in their tweet.

We want you, your friends, your mom, everyone to start using “#binhere” on Twitter when you see a recycling bin when you’re out and about. Here’s a recent example tweeted by yours truly: “#binhere #Dunn Rite-Aid. It’s a Pepsi Dream Machine.” I used a #hashtag for both the #binhere and for the town, Dunn. That way if people are searching for bins using #binhere or looking at what’s being said about Dunn on Twitter, they see my tweet.

You might be wondering “I don’t have a smart phone” or “you lost me at social media.” Well, there’s no harm in posting or searching #binhere tweets at home. And we are creating a website that archives all the #binhere tweets, so if you are visiting a town and can’t find a recycling location, you will soon be able to search this website to see if it is listed.

But this idea won’t work unless lots of people use #binhere. Don’t get me wrong, our interns probably contribute to a lot of the Twitter overload “fail whales,” but we can’t turn #binhere into a phenomenon alone. So here’s my challenge to those of you on Twitter (or those thinking about taking the plunge): post a #binhere tweet once a month. If at least one of your followers learns where a bin is or posts a #binhere tweet it’s worth it. It might not be the same as putting a bin beside every trash can, but it’s a start in the right direction to get people to recycle when they’re out and about.

What’s up on Twitter

Guest blogger – Clare

The State Legislature recently wrapped up its summer session, and Twitter was buzzing about the new law that requires electronics manufacturers, retailers, consumers and the local governments to have shared responsibility of handling and processing old electronics. Senate Bill 887 is awaiting signature by Governor Perdue. Hats off to @StaceyCoff @BettyJoeFox @GreenlineGroup and many more for tweeting about it.

The other big NC recycling news was Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s switch to roll-carts and increased materials collection. While there was some confusion (this article from the Charlotte Observer is a must read) many #clt tweeters were excited about the change. @StuartWatson36 @briandfrancis @rachellmartin and more tweeted on the Geoportal system that can clear up some of that confusion: http://bit.ly/9guYEK

A headline in the Mt. Airy News last week read “Robert Whitt Recycles his Plastic Bottles at the North Surry Recycling Center”. Good for you, Mr. Whitt. And good for @topix_nc for reporting it.

@AllConcern reported how Landis, NC is starting a new recycling program, while @WinstonNews tweeted that a recycling center in Elkin closed. (if I were tweeting this, I’d use the #yinyang #hashtag)

Finally, one of @RE3org’s tweets: #binhere recycle at any NC rest stop on #I95 #I40 and #I85. What’s #binhere you ask? Stay tuned…