Communicating with your staff and students in the education sector

Internal communication is an important part of making recycling a success in your organisation. If you completed a waste action plan in Step 2, you’ll find this a useful starting point when it comes to communicating your recycling plans with staff, students and visitors. It will help you to begin by being clear about:

• Why your organisation needs to recycle – go back to Step 1 for all the great reasons why your organisation should recycle.

• Who manages waste within your organisation? – for example, who empties the bins? Name individual employees, cleaners and facilities staff.

• The location and type of recycling bins and storage facilities – the first section of this step will help with this.

• Which external providers manage the waste and recycling collections – and when and how often do collections take place?

• How should items be presented for recycling? – for example, clean, dry and loose.

Setting your recycling communication aims and objectives

Setting communication aims and objectives will help focus your communications on supporting your wider recycling objectives, as well as enabling you to monitor whether they’ve been achieved. Your objectives could be as follows:

• Raise awareness of recycling opportunities in the organisation

• Inform staff, students and visitors of your recycling and waste policy, your organisation’s legal obligations, and what they need to do as individuals

• Make it clear how your company manages its waste, the benefits of recycling and why you want your employees to recycle

• Educate, inform and motivate staff, students and visitors to recycle – provide instructions and practical support on how to recycle in the workplace and for those working remotely

• Change behaviour – all staff, students and visitors choose to recycle, making recycling the norm

An example of an aim and objective might be:

Aim: To encourage staff, students and visitors to start or improve recycling around the campus

Objective: To raise awareness of what can be recycled across the campus by installing recycling bins, signage and promotional posters in bin areas by the end of 2025

Planning who you need to tell

It’s essential to communicate your plans effectively to all your staff, students and visitors including those working remotely, to help them understand how, why, when and where to recycle.

Think about the different types of stakeholders – students, visitors, full-time, part-time, temporary or seasonal staff – and the different roles within your organisation and across your setting:

• Students

• Educators/Teachers

• Senior management

• Managers

• Team leaders

• Technicians

• Facilities staff/cleaners

• Recycling service providers

• Office staff

• Remote workers

Assigning a named employee to take responsibility for communicating your recycling plan with staff and students will help make sure everyone is kept informed and doing their bit. Remember that recycling requirements will differ depending on a person’s role in the organisation; for example, students and teaching staff may be more likely to recycle office paper and food waste, whereas catering and canteen staff may focus on recycling cardboard, plastic and metal food packaging and food waste.

For larger settings, you may wish to send recycling messages to Department Heads/team leaders to cascade down to individual staff and student representatives. For example, senior staff members will need to brief managers about enforcing your waste and recycling policy, and managers may then need to liaise with waste service providers and directly with the facilities staff/cleaners responsible for sorting and managing waste for collection. Team leaders will need to ensure their staff members follow the recycling policy and reinforce what can be recycled, how and where.

Creating effective communications

Using consistent and complementary messaging across different communication touch points across your establishment – from education emails to signage at recycling points – can help encourage staff, students and visitors to recycle and change their behaviour.

Using branding to give your recycling communications a consistent look and feel will:

• Provide a recognisable identity for your recycling information

• Make the messages more recognisable and memorable

• Help build credibility and trust

Creating communication touch points across high-traffic areas across your establishment helps staff and students understand what they can and can’t recycle. To help with this, we’ve created a tried and tested ‘Business of Recycling’ identity that you can use to show your organisation’s support and commitment to recycling. This, combined with the existing Recycle Now logo, helps reinforce recycling messages both at home and work.

Download these FREE communications resources to get started. They’re designed for you to print off and include:

• Letterhead/header - to help you promote recycling in the organisation, highlight successes and reinforce the actions you want employees to take

• Email footer – a regular recycling reminder to employees and external audiences

• Instructional posters – in A3, A4 and A5, to show what can and can’t be recycled for each type of waste; these can also double up as bin stickers to ensure materials are collected correctly

• Short animations – to help staff and students understand more about the recycling process

Monitoring the impact of your communications

Once you’ve begun your recycling communications, remember to review them regularly to see how much of an impact they’ve had and spot where there may be room for improvement. Note successes so that you can share them with your staff and students to encourage them; success could be specific actions taken to achieve objectives or consistent, credible presentation of meaningful results.

Above all, identify activities that worked well and those that didn’t, and share learning from this. Review the findings and then list your key recommendations for future communications