STATE WATER RESOURCES CONTROL BOARD

Erase the Waste Stormwater Public Education Campaign
Erase the Waste Overview
Key Campaign Components
Campaign Results
Taking the Erase the Waste Campaign Statewide

Erase the Waste Stormwater Public Education Campaign

Reaching children with environmental information is vitally important to the success of the California Water Boards mission of preserving, enhancing and restoring the quality of California’s water resources for the benefit of present and future generations. Getting youth to take action to preserve the environment and feel a sense of responsibility toward it will be equally critical in assuring a healthy and clean environment for the future. Life-long habits begin at a very early age.

Research shows that children can be powerful catalysts for change in households too, influencing the entire family’s habits – whether related to health, lifestyle or the environment. Providing children with actionable environmental information – reinforced through service learning opportunities – will be critical if the Water Boards are to affect long-term, positive change and community action throughout California.

To that end, the Water Boards created the two year stormwater public education campaign, known as Erase the Waste, which includes the creation of the Water Quality Service Learning Program and www.waterlessons.org – a Web-based distance learning tool. What started as a campaign in Los Angeles County, the Erase the Waste Stormwater Public Education Campaign is now a statewide effort to curb a major environmental and public health issue now facing California: polluted runoff.

Read below about the success of the Erase the Waste Campaign in Los Angeles County and know that the California Water Boards are looking forward to assisting other cities and schools throughout the state in educating their residents on the importance of protecting our state waters.

School districts will also benefit by being able to use the tools created on this Web site to educate students about the importance of watershed stewardship, while also adhering to teaching standards. Please help us share this important tool with other teachers in your district.

Erase the Waste Overview

Los Angeles County, along with many other metropolitan areas, faces major public health and environmental concerns due to stormwater pollution in local neighborhoods and nearby waters. To address this critical issue in Los Angeles, the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) developed and implemented a two-year, $5 million multifaceted, multiethnic stormwater public education campaign, called Erase the Waste. The campaign focused on reducing regional priority pollutants, including trash, cigarette butts and pet waste. The campaign was launched in August 2003 and is concluding this summer. It marked the first countywide stormwater public education effort funded by the State of California (with polluter fines from California’s Cleanup and Abatement Account), and was a demonstration of the State’s commitment to improve water quality in Los Angeles County.

The Erase the Waste campaign was designed to reach LA County’s nearly 10 million residents, as well as elected officials, community organizations, business/industry and environmental stakeholders, students, educators and media. Because of the region’s broad population and the need to direct budget resources where they would be most effective, the campaign used research to prioritize segments of the target audience. Key audiences were identified through existing data which confirmed “the greatest polluters, most likely to change their behaviors.” That group represented more than 72 percent of LA County’s population, including homeowners, pet owners, automotive/home improvement do-it-yourselfers, and smokers (who also have a high tendency to litter with fast-food wrappers and trash, in addition to cigarette butts).

The Erase the Waste campaign adopted a new approach to communicating about the stormwater issue. It positioned stormwater pollution as a local neighborhood issue that impacted the public health and safety of families, children and pets. Most previous stormwater pollution prevention efforts, including those in Los Angeles County, focused largely on the environmental impacts of pollution (i.e., beach closures, water quality). The Erase the Waste campaign relied on research that confirmed Los Angeles residents are more willing to change their polluting behaviors when they understand the health and safety risks that pollution poses to their immediate community. The research helped develop a campaign that encouraged the public to stop polluting close to home (i.e., to create safe and clean playgrounds and city streets), which reduces pollution at the community level, and reduces the amount of litter and debris finding its way into the stormdrain system and our waterways.

Erase the Waste prompted residents and community groups to take ownership of the problem and change their behaviors through pollution solutions. The campaign worked to: 1) educate the public on the health, safety and environmental impacts that stormwater pollution creates for their families, communities and waterways; 2) inform and empower residents to take action to keep their neighborhoods clean, safe and healthy; and 3) reduce the amount of stormwater pollution in Los Angeles County and improve the local environment.

Key Campaign Components

• Advertising — Los Angeles residents are bombarded with messages every day. The challenges in creating messages that “cut through the clutter” and are memorable are significant. The campaign developed ads that took a problem/solution approach and used both humor and drama to illustrate the health/safety impacts of stormwater pollution. The print, television and radio ads (English and Spanish) included “Excuse Me, Did You Drop Something?” on the subject of pet waste and “Hold on to Your Butts,” encouraging proper cigarette disposal. To ensure that the ads were seen and heard by the largest audience possible, the campaign strategically placed them during nighttime network television newscasts and on radio during peak drive-time hours.

• Neighborhood Action Kit (NAK) — The campaign team developed a comprehensive “how-to” guide containing tips, tools and resources to enlist residents as pollution prevention advocates. The NAK offered tools to help community members create their own pollution prevention activities or support existing efforts. They were produced in five languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese) and distributed though a broad-based countywide network of community-based and civic organizations, elected officials and corporate partners, and downloadable on the campaign’s multilingual Web site, www.erasethewaste.com. This resource is an important vehicle that gives communities the assistance they need to get involved in pollution prevention efforts and educate their neighbors, friends and family on the stormwater issue.

• Community-Based Outreach — To effectively reach community members, a campaign needs both a compelling message and trusted, credible messengers. The campaign engaged community leaders, community/social service organizations, and healthcare agencies to conduct grassroots outreach on behalf of the campaign from a highly credible and new viewpoint. The group, known as the Water Improvement Network (WIN), also provided the State with feedback from community residents about campaign strategies and activities. The development of local campaign “advocates” was effective in encouraging residents to take ownership of their community pollution problems and create solutions. It also helped build new leaders in the stormwater pollution prevention effort that can carry the Erase the Waste message and foster neighborhood participation long after the campaign “officially” ends.

• Strategic Partnerships — Partnerships with recognized and respected retailers and organizations brought the campaign many new avenues to reach residents with campaign messages. The campaign cultivated 150 innovative partnerships with various retailers, nonprofits and public agencies throughout Los Angeles County. Through these partnerships, the campaign was able to educate its partners’ customers and members by conducting staff trainings, meetings and in-store promotions; developing point-of-purchase displays; and distributing campaign collateral materials. Activities strategically linked messages and messengers – so that Petco and PetSmart delivered pet waste disposal messages to pet owners, while Lowe’s, OSH and The Home Depot carried messages about paint and gardening products to their home improvement customers. The campaign developed a unique partnership with the American Lung Association to join resources and outreach efforts on the issue of cigarette butt disposal. Additional partners included Wal-Mart, Target, Armstrong Garden Centers and the City of Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Department.

• Youth Education — One of the best ways to create long-term sustainability in a community environmental education campaign is by creating effective education tools that will inform youth about their local environment, and how they can protect it through personal action and initiative. Through such education it is hoped that these young residents will internalize these principals to benefit society as water stewards, both as young students, and as future civic leaders. In this vein, the campaign team created educational projects to reach the area’s one million K-12 students including: 1) a water quality learning model for grades 4-6, consisting of classroom-based studies and school/community-based projects to help students understand polluted runoff in a campus setting (this program meets California State Standards and will be provided to educators statewide, along with teacher training sessions); 2) an interactive watershed exhibit at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro; and 3) an after school program for use statewide.

• Media — People have a tendency to view messages as more credible when they are featured in news outlets, because they interpret media coverage as the media’s “endorsement” of an issue’s importance. The campaign utilized general interest, ethnic and community media to increase visibility on the stormwater issue and position the State as an expert resource. The campaign developed a “fresh” story angle, positioning stormwater pollution as a public health problem, to heighten media interest. The team conducted outreach around campaign milestones (i.e., launch of the Neighborhood Action Kit, two 8-week advertising cycles, community cleanups), local stormwater stories and water policy issues. It also placed special emphasis on times during the year when stormwater issues are most relevant to residents. These included spring (as gardening season began), the beginning of summer (when clean beaches are top-of-mind), and just before “first flush” (the beginning of the rainy season to point out and help prevent problems that are caused by trash and oil residue being swept into stormdrains and out to the ocean).

• Key Campaign Events — To extend the reach of campaign messages through face-to-face interaction, the campaign hosted several public outreach events throughout the two-year campaign. The campaign partnered with LA Works, a local community outreach organizations, to clean up the Los Angeles River. During the local cleanup, more than 300 volunteers cleaned trash and debris from the Los Angeles River and painted over graffiti. The campaign hosted another local clean-up event in a South Los Angeles neighborhood near Compton Creek, where more than 200 local residents, school children and members of the Los Angeles Beautification Team (a South Los Angeles civic group) collected four tons of litter and debris from the streets, painted over graffiti, and planted trees throughout the neighborhood. The Erase the Waste campaign also attended diverse community fairs and festivals in Los Angeles County and hosted an interactive, educational, outreach booth. Throughout the campaign, staff attended more than 30 community fairs and festivals to reach 225,000 residents.

Campaign Results

• According to an August 2004 countywide assessment study on Los Angeles County polluting behaviors:
  • Approximately one-third of Los Angeles County residents have changed at least one of their polluting behaviors in the past year;
  • Approximately 50 percent of residents have been more active in neighborhood clean-up activities in response to messages they have seen/heard;
  • More than 70 percent of all Los Angeles County adults ages 25 to 54 and men 18 to 24 were reached through the campaign’s multimedia advertising.

• Garnered media coverage surrounding the campaign that reached an approximate audience of 3.5 million with an advertising equivalency of more than $150,000.

• Secured more than $550,000 in advertising added value elements (i.e., airing of public service announcements, Web site placements, on-air promotions), extending the campaign’s reach by another 33 million impressions.

• Reached more than 225,000 residents through participation in key community events.

• Distributed an initial 15,000 Neighborhood Action Kits countywide.

Taking the Erase the Waste Campaign Statewide

The Los Angeles County campaign met many of its objectives in reaching the County’s population on stormwater prevention issues and secured measurable changes in polluting behaviors. The next step is to maintain visibility on the stormwater issue and build the active involvement of residents and communities statewide. As part of this effort to build and support sustainable public education programs, the State is making a number of tools available to municipalities statewide. These include adapted versions of the Erase the Waste advertising, collateral materials, and Neighborhood Action Kit; a new service learning model and after school program; a series of public education workshops for municipalities under stormwater regulations; and a Web-based resource directory (developed in partnership with the California Stormwater Quality Association), that will provide the “best of the best” stormwater materials from throughout California.

Through this next phase of the Erase the Waste campaign, municipalities will be able to use these resources free of charge. This offers substantial benefits, particularly to smaller stormwater programs, allowing them to conserve precious resources and budgets and tap into proven strategies and creative executions developed by public education experts.