News

Zero Heroes are coming to a cleaner, greener street near you

Published: Monday, 12th September 2016

Birmingham’s new Zero Hero campaign to encourage waste reduction with a series of pop-up events across the city.

Birmingham City Council is urging residents to reduce, reuse and recycle waste through a new campaign called Zero Heroes. The campaign is part of a wider council initiative called Cleaner Greener Streets, which aims to help Birmingham work towards its target of becoming a zero waste to landfill city by 2035. Last year just 26.5 per cent of household waste in Birmingham was recycled, showing there’s still a long way to go.

The pop-up campaign will visit six key areas of Birmingham: Sparkbrook, Washwood Heath, Bordesley Green, Springfield, Lozells and East Handsworth, and Kingstanding. Free Residents’ Packs, detailing how to reduce waste and save money, will be handed out and there will also be an opportunity for residents to select their Zero Hero name to be in with the chance of winning some shopping vouchers.

The campaign will coincide with Recycle Week 2016, which takes place between 12 to 18 September 2016, with a focus on the Unusual Suspects – the forgotten items such as aerosol cans, and toilet roll tubes, which are often missed when recycling. Each pop-up event will feature a quiz based on the Unusual Suspects to test residents’ recycling knowledge. There will even be a ‘Zero Hero’ available for visitors to have their photo taken with, to upload onto social media with the campaign’s #cleanerbrum hashtag.

To help residents and local businesses to reduce their waste even further, community partners are also invited to sign up to the free directory on the council’s website, which will serve as a single portal to signpost residents and businesses to services in their area.

Cllr Lisa Trickett, Cabinet Member for Clean Streets, Recycling and Environment at Birmingham City Council, said: “Birmingham has made significant progress in terms of recycling and having a more sustainable approach to waste management. However, our performance against some key targets such as recycling and the amount of waste generated by households still needs to improve more. Our aim is to increase the city’s recycling rate to 70 per cent, which would place Birmingham among the best local authorities nationally.

“Recycle Week is an ideal time for everyone to take a fresh look at their habits, and to see if there are any opportunities to shop smarter and reduce food waste, or repair broken items rather than just replace them. We hope the Residents’ Packs and the new online directory will be a real eye-opener and show that embracing the ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ message not only helps create a cleaner, greener city, it can also save money for households and the council.”

Residents’ Packs can be picked up at the six pop-up events or viewed online via the council’s website. To find out more information about the Zero Hero campaign or to get your business or service listed in the directory please visit ;www.birmingham.gov.uk/cleanerbrum for further details.

ENDS

The locations for the six pop-up events were chosen due to a range of environmental factors, including recycling.

All events will run from 9:30am to 4pm.

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