Nursery upwards. The aim of the programme is to teach children the 3R’s and encourage them to put them into practice in their daily lives, contributing to a better environment for everyone. The programme uses fun and engaging stories, craft activities and hands-on sorting of waste to get the message across. Children visiting the site get a great insight into what happens to the things they throw away and can see for themselves how their recycling is sorted. They even get to make their own piece of recycled paper to take away as a reminder of what they have learnt.

In 2016/17 the team was expanded to offer more activities in schools and, as a result, has more than doubled the number of children we have spoken to over the year – up to 10,000 children during the course of the school year, compared with 4,500 the previous year. 60% of the primary schools in our four boroughs have now been involved in the programme and a third of those who took part this year were new schools that had not been involved before, so the reach of the programme has also increased.

For the first time the education team have been able to offer Waste Audits to schools, where they spend a morning sorting and weighing the waste from the whole school, to see exactly how much the school is throwing away and how well they are doing with their recycling. The first one of these was run at a school in Wandsworth in the Spring Term, and the feedback was extremely positive: “ It has made a huge impact on staff and the children. Now we have lots of ideas and things to look at to help us move forward!”

RWR manages communication campaigns to promote the three R's using a variety of methods and media, such as adverts in-house Borough publications, waste collection vehicle livery advertising, local newspaper and Borough poster sites advertising. In addition leaflets are sent to residents with their Council Tax bills and information is also disseminated through the use of WRWA and partner websites and social media. Many themes are communicated, from 'Minimising Waste at Christmas' to 'Reducing Contamination in the Recycling Stream'.

In 2016/17, the Authority continued its “Golden Ticket Recycling Scheme” to reward residents for their recycling efforts. The Scheme was open to all 455,000 households across the Authority’s area, with residents simply asked to fill out their basic contact details on the Golden Tickets and insert one each week with their clean recycling. Two draws were held during the year – one in December and one in March. In each Borough one lucky resident per draw received a first prize of £500, with eight others receiving a cash prize of £250. Community Groups located in the Authority’s area also received prizes for encouraging members to recycle.