Winner Division C and Overall Winner

Waverley Council: Collaborating for Impact C4I
Waverley’s Collaborating for Impact (C4I) program has increased the collective capacity of 10 environmental groups to mobilise community action around litter prevention and waste avoidance. Using the "Collective Impact" framework to collaboratively design, implement and evaluate community waste education activities with environment groups has strengthened capabilities to help achieve their goals. The program participants developed additional skills to engage the community, and reported engaging over 3,500 residents, with 70% of bookings reaching new audiences.

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Winner Division A

Forbes Shire Council: Waste Wednesdays - a resource recovery communication campaign
Waste Wednesday engaged with the community and spread awareness about available resource recovery facilities, Council’s waste audit statistics, innovations and additions to the existing resource recovery programs and much more. Outcomes include bailing twine being diverted from landfill to the recycling agency within Forbes, diversion of 25 Kg of household batteries/month and a tenfold increase in participation of Clean-up Australia day, collecting over 800 kg of waste from various locations across the town.

Highly Commended Division A

Muswellbrook Shire Council: Muswellbrook Waste Wranglers education program
The Muswellbrook Waste Wranglers Education Program utilises 3 waste characters that represent the red, yellow and green bins. These characters have become synonymous with good waste management in Muswellbrook. They can be seen all through the streets, at community events and educational facilities. These characters help deliver the avoid, reduce, reuse and recycle message to the local community.

Winner Division B

Lane Cove Council: Normalising Council Clean Up to prevent illegal dumping
Lane Cove Council encouraged residents to do the right thing with their bulky waste, by prompting use of Council clean-up as an alternative to dumping.  Council simultaneously discouraged future dumping by tagging dumps and issuing warnings. These were simple activities, but new social expectations were established. Clean-up booking rates increased, and dumping rates reduced (by 70% in hotspots over the year). Behaviour changes were accelerated by social learning where the community could learn by trial and error, and by observing others.

Highly Commended Division C

Northern Beaches Council: Waste reduction event and video series
The waste reduction event and video series aims to empower and create long lasting behaviour change by building capacity amongst residents. Inspiring residents to take simple steps, teaching them skills, sharing the stories of others and showing them just how easy and rewarding it can be to make changes, participate in a more circular economy and manage waste responsibly.  The series delivered 108 events, workshops and webinars to 11,082 people, plus resulted in a significant drop in tonnes of waste sent to landfill.