City of Cambridge Participatory Budgeting

Committee: Environment

Cost: $85,000

Location: Citywide

Short Description:

Leverage local artists to develop an educational campaign about proper disposal of recyclables, trash and compost. This approach will decrease waste, reduce recycling/compost contamination and reduce rats by improving sanitation.

Long Description:

Many Cambridge residents lack knowledge about proper disposal of recyclables, trash, and compost.  To improve their understanding and compliance with Cambridge recycling practices, this proposal would engage a marketing firm to plan, design & implement an engaging educational campaign using local artistic talent through the Arts Council. According to DPW a campaign of this style could be one of the highest impact investments the city could make to improve trash, recycling & composting while reducing rats.

This campaign would leverage fresh, catchy concepts from our local artistic community (visual artists, musicians, singer-songwriters, performers, music teachers, and sound recording technologists) to generate content and identify effective communication channels.

The below image is an example from a public service marketing campaign produced by a local non-profit to illustrate an example of what an educational marketing campaign could look like.

OpenBiome example: