How do you persuade people living in high-rise flats in an inner city borough, many of whom don’t speak English, to recycle? For the LB Tower Hamlets, the answer was to engage a previously untested group of community organisations, collectively known as Tower Hamlets Community Recycling Consortium (THCRC), to provide door-to-door recycling services for residents living on high-rise estates in the borough. It was a risky strategy, but one that seems to have paid off.

Normal kerbside recycling collections usually see around 35% of households participating. THCRC, on the other hand, has an overall participation rate of over 60%. How have they managed to achieve this? One reason is that they have recruited the majority of their staff from the local area, so residents see faces and hear voices they are familiar with. This is particularly important considering that Tower Hamlets has one of the most diverse populations in the whole country. Another is that, being part of a pioneering scheme, residents feel they are being given a special service and they should take advantage of it. As Worku Lakew, MD of THCRC says, "In high rise flats, people are de-linked from the rest of us. Besides the recycling service, the only other institution that calls on their doorstep regularly is the postman. The fact that we are going in to provide (recycling) on the doorstep is really important to them. They feel they are deserving of this service, it is empowering them and therefore they don't take it lightly.”

Case study issued in November 2005