Partnerships
The Role of PR and Stakeholder Partnerships in Driving Sustainable Waste Management
A look at how effective stakeholder engagement and PR have transformed waste management practices in the UK.
Gareth Morton and Dr. Adam Read
A senior figure in the UK Government’s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) once said, “Waste is a communication business, not just a logistics business.” This is so very true, although until recently most would not have agreed with it, as we are reliant on public cooperation to recycle and their understanding and acceptance of new, sometimes controversial, waste management treatment facilities.
Communications covers a multitude of sins … advertising, marketing, media relations (PR) and some relatively new concepts like social marketing, stakeholder, and community engagement. Partnerships is currently a bit of a buzz word in the UK but there is no doubt that it is the way forward in terms of addressing the twin issues of reaching higher levels of recycling and getting residual waste facilities successfully through the planning system. The UK, in case you may not know, is subject to something called the Landfill Directive—a European law that sets tough targets for the reduction of biological/organic material sent to landfills. For the UK, with an abundance of void capacity (not always in the right places admittedly), landfills are no longer the option of choice and various technological alternatives are being sought to pre-treat waste to render it inert before residues are sent to landfills.
The journey towards this new waste management nirvana is a tortuous and expensive affair and many municipalities in the UK are looking to partner with their neighbouring authorities to gain economies of scale and ease the financial load. The new waste partnerships require a commitment to a joint vision of how to deal with residual waste treatment and an inevitable loss of ‘individual authority’ control to the overall group. They can be difficult to establish and maintain and more than one has foundered due to internal rifts when it came to the crunch decisions, such as: “We’re having this particular technology and it’ll be built there!” This has resulted in the public turning on the partnership and rescinding any support they may have offered for the partnership, the technology or the proposed sites in the past. That said, some partnerships are successful and this article looks at the crucial role of PR and stakeholder partnership in the success of these waste management projects.
Steps to Success
Identify Your Stakeholders
The first task is to identify your stakeholders and their relationship with you or your project. One way to do this is to carry out a stakeholder mapping exercise (see Figure 1). Once you have your list of stakeholders, which may range from local politicians to national companies, you can plan your engagement campaign. The key is to identify areas of mutual interest or friction, their real and perceived concerns, and any barriers to working cooperatively with them. Once this is done, you can plan how to effectively engage them to win their approval and support or, if that is impossible, their acceptance of what you need to do—whether it is building a new waste-to-energy plant near where they live, opening a new waste sorting facility near a hospital or school or implementing a new curbside collection scheme.
Engage the Media
This is where PR plays its part along with the rest of the marketing mix as the media (local press, radio and TV) is often a key stakeholder whose stance can be crucial to the smooth and swift progress of a partnership project. Engage the media early and get them on your side at all costs. You can do this by arranging a detailed media briefing so that they understand exactly what you are doing and why you need to do it. Stress the benefits to the wider community. Best of all, especially if you are developing new residual waste treatment facilities, take them to see a landfill site and show an example of one the new technologies you might be considering. One’s first visit to a landfill site often leaves a powerful and lasting impression and the contrast to the relatively clean surroundings of, for example, an energy from waste plant, cannot be greater. This can help counter the ‘misinformation’ that is often used by local campaign groups to undermine plans for new treatment facilities.
Sustained Awareness
You will need to undertake a sustained awareness and education program with other stakeholders (including residents in areas likely to be impacted by new facilities and associated transport routes) ranging from online information, printed newsletters, public meetings with different groups (as far as possible in their territory), as well as many one-to-one meetings with key opinion formers and decision makers.
Perception of Risk
One of the most important issues is to contain the ‘perception of risk’ envelope—the psychological area within which people feel directly threatened by any new development. Communities within this area need extra attention as they will have legitimate concerns which need to be addressed—usually associated with the negative impact of the facility on their house price, air quality, or view. But this aspect of the campaign must not be given too much emphasis, and must be well planned at an early stage to avoid any local groundswell of public opposition that could rapidly build momentum and may ultimately break your partnership and ruin your plans (see Perception of Risk in the UK sidebar).
Planning Well
So, early and extensive communications with stakeholders is important to address their concerns and win their support or acceptance for new waste infrastructure. The media is a key influential stakeholder and needs its own engagement plan to win it over, as does any community living near the facility you intend to build. And remember, this has to be a genuine exercise—people are too savvy (and possibly cynical) nowadays and will spot a ‘box ticking’ process immediately and will let you know about it in no uncertain terms, to the possible detriment of your project, and your finances.
Gareth Morton is a principal consultant and communications specialist in AEA’s Waste Management and Resource Efficiency Group. Gareth can be reached at +44 (0) 870 190 6062 or via e-mail at [email protected].
Dr. Adam Read, is Practice Lead for AEA’s Global Resource Efficiency and Waste Management Group. He can be reached at +44 (0) 870 190 2552 or via e-mail at [email protected].
AEA is one of the world’s leaders in energy and environmental consultancy and information management. The company operates in the UK, Europe, the U.S. and China advising the UK Government, the EU and major private sector organizations in energy and climate change, air and water quality, risk management, resources and waste management, sustainable transport and knowledge transfer.For more information please visitwww.aeat.co.uk.
Figure 1
Stakeholder mapping: categorizing stakeholder groups by their level of interest and influence.
Figure courtesy of AEA.
Perception of Risk in the UK
Perceptions of risk, particularly by key stakeholders has been the undoing far too often for waste infrastructure projects in the UK over the last five years and is now threatening to undermine the UK’s ability to meet European diversion targets—a situation which will lead to significant fines for the UK taxpayer. New waste infrastructure projects in Bedfordshire, Cornwall, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Coventry and Guernsey (to name a few) have all been delayed or rejected as a result of local stakeholder pressure. This situation will become even more ‘interesting’ as the new Conservative Government is actively promoting more local decision making on waste strategies and planning. This will undoubtedly lead to a greater emphasis being placed on stakeholder engagement, PR and communications planning for all future waste services and associated treatment infrastructure. Only time will tell if the extra effort in this area will work.
However, done correctly, stakeholder engagement campaigns can help deliver projects successfully as this example from the east coast of England shows. Kingston upon Hull lies on the north side of the Humber estuary and is surrounded by the County of East Yorkshire. These two municipalities formed a partnership a number of years ago to develop a new waste-to-energy plant to treat their residual waste in order to meet the requirements of the EU Landfill Directive. Together with a UK waste management company they embarked on a stakeholder and community engagement program to build support for the proposed facility. The waste management company dealt with all public communications about the plan with media relations, newsletters, presentations to locals and community groups, and regular updates for local politicians.
The two municipalities worked closely together to ensure that due legal processes were followed. Cross-departmental teams were set up to ensure key departments and individuals were kept informed at every step (in particular the local planning departments). The local community was given space to voice its concern and opposition and extra effort was taken to communicate the need for the project and the reasons why the final site had been selected. The local NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) campaign, HOTI (Hull Opposing The Incinerator), was vociferous in its opposition and ran a tough campaign that did cause rifts in the Councils. However, key to the project’s successful passage through the planning process was the work undertaken during many meetings and discussions with key stakeholders and decision makers, in particular the Chair of the local Planning Committee who brought ‘on-board early in the process and worked closely with council officers throughout the process to ensure the final decision was made on planning criteria and not other factors. Also key to its success was the containment of the ‘perception of risk’ envelope—while locally there was a strong campaign taking place, elsewhere in the district and wider afield in the East Riding of Yorkshire, the public were less concerned because of the clarity of the information provided. The facility’s planning application was a success and the energy recovery plant is now operating with little local concern or ongoing negative press.