VERDANT HELPS SOUTH OXFORDSHIRE WIN GREEN AWARD

4th December 2009 - Municipal services contractor Verdant has helped South Oxfordshire District Council win a highly-rated Green Award for its carefully-planned and well-executed communications campaign to support the roll-out of a new, radically-altered recycling and refuse collection service.

The Green Award, for best direct mail campaign, recognised the quality of a series of information leaflets that were produced and distributed to local residents prior to the launch of the new service in early June.

The leaflets were designed and produced by Ferrier Pearce Creative Group, working closely with South Oxfordshire District Council, the communications team at its strategic partner, the Vale of White Horse District Council, and Verdant.

Judges commended the campaign for its use of environmentally-friendly material and said: “South Oxfordshire District Council delivered a pack with engaging, clear and concrete information regarding what to recycle, and how, to 60,000 households. As a result, they moved from being 124th on the UK Local Authority recycling register to amongst the best in England.”

David Dodds, South Oxfordshire District cabinet member for waste, said: “We always strive for excellence and it is good to see this reflected in the award. We fully appreciated our new service was a big change for all our residents, and so our challenge was to help them through this transition by providing clear, easy to follow information on how the new scheme would work.”

The new service, which features alternate week collection of single stream commingled recyclables and residual waste, weekly collection of food waste, and an opt-in green waste collection service, has seen South Oxfordshire’s recycling and composting rate rocket from 38% to 70% or better.

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About Verdant

Verdant Group Plc (www.verdant-group.co.uk), part of the fast-growing, recycling-led Greenstar UK group (www.greenstar.co.uk), provides high quality, efficient recycling, refuse, street cleansing and grounds maintenance services for 23 local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland. These include the company’s first twin-council contract for South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils. The company makes over 55 million recycling and refuse collections annually from nearly 1.1 million households, and employs over 1,600 staff operating with 600+ vehicles. The June 2009 launch of a new recycling, refuse, food and green waste collection service for South Oxfordshire helped push local recycling rates to 70%, while the first months of an enhanced recycling, refuse, food and garden waste collection scheme for Surrey Heath is achieving 60% rates. Hundreds of Verdant’s staff hold a recognised vocational qualification following a company-wide skills development programme due for completion by 2010.

For further media information, contact:

Blair Drummond, Verdant PR consultant – tel (m) 07798 686 217, email blair.drummond@btopenworld.com