Leicester City Council: Doorstepping Campaign and Participation Monitoring Evaluation
Background & Context
Leicester City Council commissioned M·E·L Research to design, deliver and evaluate a large-scale doorstepping campaign to increase participation in its kerbside orange bag recycling service. The Council wanted to improve both the quantity and quality of household recycling by encouraging greater participation, increasing understanding of what could be recycled, and addressing barriers associated with problematic materials such as cardboard, plastics and glass.
The campaign targeted almost 100,000 households across Leicester. It was delivered in two phases, with the second phase focusing specifically on lower-performing neighbourhoods with higher levels of ethnic diversity, where additional communication challenges were anticipated. Alongside behaviour change activity, Leicester City Council wanted a robust evaluation to understand whether the intervention had changed recycling participation and to identify future opportunities for improving service performance. This required a combined programme of large-scale fieldwork, customer research and operational participation monitoring to provide both behavioural evidence and resident insight.
Delivered a large-scale face-to-face doorstepping campaign targeting 99,183 households across 22 wards.
Successfully achieved contact with 39,744 households, exceeding the required 40% contact target.
Recruited, trained and supervised a dedicated team of local Recycling Advisors working under an M·E·L Field Supervisor.
Developed ward-level contact targets to ensure representative geographical coverage.
Used a structured promotional script to provide tailored advice, encourage participation and improve understanding of recyclable materials.
Distributed different information leaflets for each campaign phase, with Phase 2 materials redesigned to use more graphical content for lower-performing and more diverse communities.
Left “Sorry we missed you” cards and recycling information where residents were unavailable.
Recorded operational issues, including requests for replacement orange bags, and fed these back to the Council on a daily basis.
Tailored engagement timing around local circumstances, including university term dates and Diwali, to maximise household contact rates.
Recognising the linguistic diversity within some target communities, M·E·L Research also recruited Recycling Advisors able to speak Gujarati and Punjabi. Where households required support in these languages, follow-up visits were arranged with appropriately skilled advisors to improve engagement.
An additional behavioural reinforcement exercise was undertaken within Abbey Ward, where selected households received follow-up visits encouraging continued recycling, reinforcing key messages around problematic materials and addressing barriers to participation. Advisors also targeted key ACORN population segments to improve engagement amongst underperforming groups.
Face-to-face household survey
Alongside the promotional campaign, M·E·L Research conducted a substantial programme of 3,002 face-to-face household surveys, delivered using tablets through door-to-door interviewing.
The survey explored:
awareness of recycling services
claimed recycling behaviour
frequency of use
understanding of recyclable materials
barriers to participation
experiences of ordering replacement recycling bags.
Fieldwork was undertaken across six wards, with quotas designed to ensure representation across ACORN household classifications. Survey quotas closely matched the city’s demographic profile, providing confidence that the findings were robust and representative.
Participation monitoring
To independently measure behavioural change rather than relying solely on claimed behaviour, M·E·L Research implemented a comprehensive programme of WRAP-compliant participation monitoring.
The evaluation included:
pre- and post-campaign monitoring
three recycling collection rounds
monitoring across Freeman, Knighton, Spinney Hills and Beaumont Leys
measurement of set-out rates
participation rates
excess recyclable material presented
frequency of participation
number of recycling bags presented.
Monitoring followed WRAP’s recognised methodology, with field staff working alongside collection crews to accurately record participation before collections commenced. Data were entered into SPSS for statistical analysis.
Additional in-depth analysis
Following the main evaluation, M·E·L Research undertook supplementary property-level analysis within Beaumont Leys.
This linked participation monitoring, household contact records and survey evidence to examine the specific impact of direct doorstep engagement compared with households where personal contact had not been achieved. This additional analysis provided a more detailed understanding of how behaviour change differed between directly engaged and non-engaged households.
Outputs
M·E·L Research produced a comprehensive evaluation combining operational monitoring, behavioural evidence and customer insight.
Analysis included:
descriptive statistical analysis of survey findings
WRAP participation monitoring measures
pre- and post-intervention comparisons
street-level participation analysis
ACORN segmentation analysis
frequency of participation analysis
bag count analysis
linked property-level analysis of engagement versus non-engagement groups
thematic analysis of feedback gathered by Recycling Advisors during doorstep engagement.
Survey and monitoring data were analysed using SPSS, while advisor feedback was synthesised to identify recurring operational issues, knowledge gaps and barriers to recycling.
The evaluation was presented as a detailed written report containing:
methodology and fieldwork reporting
quantitative findings
operational feedback
behavioural analysis
demographic profiling
participation monitoring results
targeted recommendations for future recycling campaigns.
The evidence demonstrated that while overall participation rates remained broadly stable across the monitored areas, deeper analysis showed measurable improvements amongst households that received direct personal engagement. The additional property-level analysis identified increased participation and greater recycling volumes among engaged households, while also highlighting opportunities for more targeted future behaviour change campaigns focused on specific population segments and recycling behaviours. These findings enabled Leicester City Council to better understand where doorstep engagement was most effective and informed recommendations for more targeted future communications and service improvement.
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