Province-Wide Consumer Awareness Campaigns

Carton Council Canada deploys inspiring and impactful consumer campaigns in order to support carton recycling.

8-week Social Media Campaign

From December 2020 to March 2021, Carton Council Canada (CCC) deployed an 8-week social media campaign focused on increasing the public’s awareness about recycling cartons.

The campaign shared sponsored posts on Facebook and Google. These posts encouraged consumers in Ontario and Quebec to learn more about carton recycling by watching an at-home carton recycling video or by taking a quiz and answering a series of myth-busting questions about recycling.

The campaign achieved significant reach. After 8 weeks:

  • Campaign posts generated more than 5 million impressions;
  • CCC’s video on carton recycling was played a total of 652,429 times;
  • 281,298 people engaged on our social media posts through likes, comments and clicks;
  • 12,366 people responded to CCC’s quiz.

View: Highlights from Province-wide Consumer Awareness Campaigns

To support local awareness efforts, CCC has also launched an updated Image and Ad Bank, featuring all the ads from the campaign, in addition to carton images that can be used by partners and stakeholders in their own education efforts. All of these can be customized to support targeted education efforts.

Facebook Consumer Campaign (2018)

From November 1 to December 17 2018, Carton Council Canada conducted a Facebook ad campaign. The primary audience consisted of occasional recyclers in Ontario with curbside recycling access (primarily women age 25-54). The objectives were as follows:

  • Educate consumers about what food and beverage cartons are
  • Demonstrate how to recycle food and beverage cartons to consumers and explain the benefits of doing so, including the ability for cartons to have an “afterlife” when they are recycled into new products
  • Test effectiveness of various carton recycling messaging, creative, and platform delivery options
  • Increase awareness of Carton Council of Canada and engagement with Carton Council of Canada and our content

A new CCC Facebook page was created for the campaign, which featured canvas ads, videos, and a quiz, and generated 990,025 impressions.

Collaboration with Provincial Stewardship Agencies

The CCC works with provincial stewardship agencies to execute highly visible and inspiring consumer education campaigns that promote carton recycling. Over the past years, we have partnered with Recycle BC to promote carton recycling via digital campaigns, and we teamed up with Multi-Material Stewardship Manitoba (MMSM) to feature ads on large outdoor digital boards located in high-traffic areas.

In the case of British Columbia, specific campaign creatives, including both a static and an animated display ad, were developed and used across multiple channels with the same key message: Recycle your milk, soup, and other beverage cartons in your blue bin (juice cartons are under deposit in this province). Channels included Facebook and targeted website landing pages. The ads pointed to a dedicated campaign landing page on Recycle BC’s web.

The campaign ran October 17  to November 20, 2016, delivering over 6.3 million impressions and successfully driving more cartons into the recycling stream, as measured by Recycle BC. This is especially true for the multi-family sector, where preliminary data received from sample audits indicate an approximate 7% increase in the proportion of cartons collected in the combined months of November and December 2016, relative to the October year-to-date collection. The corresponding increase for the curbside channel was 2%.

The campaign was deployed again in November 2017 and in November/December 2018 across digital and mobile display ads, as well as Facebook and Instagram ads. Overall, there has been an increase in carton recovery year over year from 2016 to 2018.

In Manitoba, CCC partnered with Multi-Material Stewardship Manitoba (MMSM) to amplify the carton recycling message within their broader Recycle Something New Campaign. Carton recycling ads were featured on two digital boards located in high-traffic areas, for a total of 97,204 plays over an 8 week period in September and October 2016. Online ads were also featured on targeted websites, such as The Weather Network, yielding 464,907 impressions and a 12% click through rate.

The CCC looks forward to building on these two successful initiatives as it works to develop further partnerships with stewardship agencies across the country to deliver the carton recycling message.

In 2018, CCC renewed its collaboration with MMSM by sponsoring carton-specific digital billboards in Manitoba, as part of MMSM’s ‘Recycling Superhero’ campaign launched in the spring.