Recycling campaign website

Sustainability Victoria (SV) conducted extensive research, which indicated that while Victorians were eager to recycle properly, they often were misinformed on how to recycle, leading to poor recycling habits and costly contamination.

We partnered with SV to develop a website that would help encourage Victorians to recycle, and act as an educational tool to help Victorians understand what could be recycled and how.

We worked closely with SV to interrogate the requirements of the project and develop a website to support their upcoming recycling campaign.

Our collective goal was to ensure the content and functionality of the website filled a specific gap in Victorian’s recycling knowledge.

User testing and prototyping

We began the project with a series of stakeholder workshops to identify the pain points and knowledge gaps around recycling.

The initial brief was to provide a look up tool to see what could be recycled in kerbside bins. However, during the workshops we identified an opportunity to provide additional educational information about how recycling helps the environment. This idea evolved into a more in-depth content website with pathways from the initial lookup tool to more detailed information around Victoria’s recycling activities.

We undertook user research to better understand Victorian’s recycling knowledge and current habits. We also wanted to see how people responded to similar tools available in other states, to identify any shortcomings that we could iron out in our solution.

Once we had established the requirements of the site, we developed a series of interactive wireframes mapping out key functionality, and developed a prototype for the lookup tool, which was the key function of the website. The wireframes and prototype were then used in further user testing to validate our proposed solution.

Design and development

We utilised the SV component library that we had developed as a base for this project, and then built some custom functionality to support unique features, such as the lookup tool.

Given that this was a campaign website, we also expanded the SV design system to include a set of campaign styles, which maintained the branding and overall design elements, but elevated these to a more campaign-based look and feel.

The recycling campaign website included educational articles and videos, but the main piece of functionality on the site was the item lookup tool.

Using predictive search and keyword matching, users could quickly and easily search for any household item within the lookup tool. We also provided a way for users to suggest items to be added to the tool, with the plan to work with SV to keep this continually updated over the campaign period.

Each item in the lookup displayed a quick summary to indicate whether Victoria-wide kerbside recycling was recommended for the particular item or material. Users could also access more detailed content on the item if required.

The site received tens of thousands of visitors and maintained a constant flow of traffic after the media campaign ended.

Website statistics show a highly engaged audience with low bounce rates and multiple product searches per visit. Overall it was incredibly successful in fulfilling the primary goal of the website – educating Victorians on what can be recycled in kerbside bins.