Recycle your electricals

Unless you have been living in a cave for the past 10 years, there is no denying we are in the middle of a climate emergency, but even if you have, you probably would have noticed the weather being a bit odd.

For those of us not living in a cave, we try and do our bit to reduce waste, dutifully recycling whatever we can, filling up our recycle bins with paper and plastics (well 80% say we do: Ref needed).

But when it comes to recycling electricals (think of anything with a plug, battery, or cable) all these good intentions disappear. Too many of us do not know what to do with our unwanted electricals, so we bin them, or hoard them.

This has made unwanted electricals the fastest growing waste stream in the world, with a million plus tonnes thrown away in the UK last year, even though 98% of old, broken, unwanted electricals can be recycled and reused to make new things from playground equipment, to aeroplanes and even lifesaving equipment.

We set out to change this.

Challenge

In two words - behaviour change.

We were tasked by Material Focus to change people’s behaviour and to get them to stop binning their electricals and start recycling them instead.

Most people can recycle paper and plastic via their council recycling bin services, which is collected every week. This behaviour has been learned over many years and we do it automatically.

This is not the case for recycling electricals.

We had to get noticed, make our case, and provide people with the opportunity to take action. And the first step in that was finding a reason for people to give a damn about it.

Insight

Our initial approach centred on the insight that people were simply blissfully unaware of the recyclable value of their unwanted electricals and that they could be broken down and recycled.

When confronted with a broken phone or electric toothbrush, it was too much of a leap for people to see how these sealed units could be broken down and yet 98% of these items could be recycled - extracting precious metals and components that can go on to live in life saving healthcare equipment, playgrounds and even aircraft.

Our proposition:

There’s more to your electrical rubbish than meets the eye.

Strategy & Approach

We needed a way of getting attention for our message that could lead to better awareness and understanding of the issue, that could highlight the positive impact of recycling electricals, and that could keep reminding people to do it, in ways that didn’t feel too didactic or officious.

Yes we needed to deliver informative and direct messages to people but we wanted to deliver this in a fun and charming way, to draw people into what could be considered a dry subject.

Enter the stage, a furry pink cat by the name of HypnoCat.

Solution

We decided that we needed a brand presenter to lead this movement for change, and Hypnocat was born - our hypnotic master of behavioural change. This bright pink, swirly eyed cat delivered simple and to-the-point messaging in a charming and hypnotic fashion, designed to grab attention and to action change.

The campaign began with localised comms and rapidly expanded across the whole of the UK, with HypnoCat appearing on everything from OOH to bin lorries across the country, as well as launching a nationwide TV campaign in 2023.