Cafeteria Waste Campaign
Health care retail cafeterias face the same issues as other public-facing retail food establishments, contamination and misplaced recyclables in the recycling and compost bins, and recyclable and compostable material being placed in the garbage can rather than sorted into the proper bins. The Cafeteria Waste Campaign was designed to make recycling and composting easier for cafeteria users through new recycling and waste bin stickers, and campaign posters and banners that were fun, eye-catching, and informative. It was installed at BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital, BC Cancer Vancouver, Lions Gate Hospital, and UBC Hospital.
The cafeterias received custom designed recycling bin stickers, campaign posters and banners, while one also received an acyclic box to display real examples of recyclables. The campaign began in October/November 2019 and was designed to run for six months until the end of March 2020. Covid-19 had a major impact on this project, with cafeterias temporarily closing down or greatly reducing services beginning in March 2020. This affected the post-project results and ability to measure the original objectives. In response, the campaign was extended until October 2020 to allow for waste audits and a greater reliance on anecdotal evidence was used.
The humourous, eye-catching campaign assets attracted attention from cafeteria users, and guests stopped at the recycling stations to determine into which stream to place their recyclables.
Read more on the BC GreenCare website.