Annual review

Surrey Environment Partnership
April 2020 – March 2021

Activity and achievements 2020-21

Managing Surrey’s waste: Collection crew safety campaign

Collection crews can play a very important role in achieving SEP’s aims, and it is important they feel supported. Feedback had indicated that many crew members were dealing with regular abuse from some residents, sometimes directed at them and sometimes at the vehicles they are driving.

So, it was agreed to run a campaign as part of the 2020-21 programme to highlight this issue and encourage residents to support their collection crews and show more consideration.

During the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, attitudes towards crews became more positive and we used our coronavirus messaging to encourage residents to recognise their crews as key workers and support them as they continued to do their job under challenging circumstances.

As restrictions eased in 2020 some of the earlier behaviours started to emerge again, so we ran a digital media campaign in November and December 2020.

The aim was to stimulate a change in attitude and behaviour among residents to help reduce verbal abuse of bin collection crews and the number of motorists who pass too close to bin collection vehicles in Surrey. The campaign was generally well received and saw some good engagement from residents.

Evaluation highlights

• Over 7,000 pageviews of the campaign webpage on the SEP website.
• Media coverage by BBC Radio Surrey.
• Digital adverts seen nearly 600,000 times.
• Significant amount of positive feedback from residents expressing support and appreciation for local collection crews.