bristol's binning
the lowdown
Bristol already had the recycling credentials. As a city, it was number one in England for seven consecutive years. But litter was still a problem and the people dropping it most often (young men aged 16–25) weren't exactly in the market for a stern public information campaign.
So, we didn't make one.
Bristol's Binning was a city-wide campaign to cut littering and introduce on-the-go recycling to Bristol city centre. My role covered the full creative package: leading the campaign identity, writing copy, and designing assets across every touchpoint.
project type
public awareness campaign
my role
design lead
outputs
visual identity
bin wraps
digital screens
social content
hubbub
bristol city council
bristol waste
mcdonalds
creative direction
The research pointed pretty firmly away from guilt-tripping, so we built the creative direction around humour and aspiration instead. For the visual identity I drew on retro gaming iconography - a visual language that we found landed with the target audience - to give the campaign its distinct look: bold type, a bright, confident colour palette, and illustration that had personality without trying too hard.
The copy came from the same place as the visuals. Lines like "Great nights aren't trashy" and "FFS, use a bin" were written to sound like something the audience might actually say rather than something being said at them. Getting that balance right, funny without being try-hard and direct without being preachy, made for a fun challenge to work through.
making it work everywhere
The identity had to stretch across a range of formats, from 60 rebranded Big Belly bins and lamppost wraps to McDonald's drive-thru screens and social content. So, flexibility was as important as the look itself.
The campaign launched with something you couldn't ignore: a 4-metre Trash Tsunami sculpture made from 90kg of rubbish - the exact amount littered on one Bristol street on a single Friday night. It floated on the harbour for four months, got the Mayor involved and landed TV coverage. One of the voting bins, a 'drum and bass vs. techno' head-to-head went viral on TikTok once Bristol's drum and bass community spotted it.
and then what?
34,542 items of litter binned via the LitterLotto app, 38% by the target 16–25 age group. The on-street recycling trial collected 526kg of plastic, cans and glass with just 14% contamination — good enough that Bristol Waste made it permanent. The campaign reached 161 million people across 31 pieces of media coverage.
The bins are still out there. The work stuck.
