In a nutshell
Rescue Me! Recycle is a behaviour change campaign we developed with WRAP for Recycle Now, the national recycling campaign. It was developed as the creative platform for Recycle Now to use and build on for years to come, focusing on a small number of commonly binned recyclable items.
The campaign was created at a time of significant change in the UK’s recycling system, with Simpler Recycling and wider packaging reforms aiming to make recycling easier and more consistent. While these changes provide the infrastructure, their success relies on people using these systems correctly. By combining behavioural science with engaging creative and coordinated national communications, Rescue Me! Recycle makes recycling the right things simpler, more engaging and easier to remember.
Insight
88% of UK households recycle regularly, but they don’t always get it right. Uncertainty about what can and can’t be recycled remains one of the biggest barriers to better recycling behaviour, meaning millions of recyclable items still end up in general waste as a result.
This shows people don’t need convincing that recycling matters, they need help making the right choice in the right moment on the specific items that trip them up. And when people aren’t sure or they aren’t getting feedback on whether they’re doing the right thing or not, it can have a knock-on effect on their confidence in the system. We know attitudes towards recycling often shift when people are participating in the system and experiencing it work for them, so the opportunity was to make the right action simple, obvious, and easy to repeat.
We also know that 49% of people are less motivated to recycle, so wouldn’t be encouraged to do more through more general recycling comms. For this audience, we needed the behavioural ask to feel narrow, concrete and achievable. Put simply:
Get people who don’t care that much about recycling to recycle just one more thing.
This meant identifying the small number of items people most commonly get wrong and building our intervention around them.
Intervention
Working alongside WRAP, we translated this into the Rescue Me! creative platform by identifying a small number of wrongly binned recyclable items and bringing them to life.
We transformed these everyday recyclable items into characters, calling out from the rubbish bin to be rescued. This idea draws on three behavioural principles to make the campaign more memorable and encourage the right decisions at the point-of-disposal:
- Personification: Giving human characteristics – a face, a voice, a personality – to something that isn't human, People pay more attention to, and feel more for, something that feels human to them.
- Identifiable victim effect: People respond far more strongly to a single, specific individual in need than to a large, faceless problem. Our characters calling to be rescued from the bin is much more powerful than an instruction to recycle them more.
- Affect heuristic: Quick emotional reactions often drive choices more than careful reasoning. At the bin, people make a snap decision about what to do - so evoking emotions in each of our items can help people make the right choice during this moment.
Since its launch in 2024, the campaign focused on items including a toilet roll tube, trigger spray bottle, aerosol can, perfume bottle and yogurt pot, with three more items - shampoo bottle, foil, and toothpaste tube - added in 2025.
Implementation
Rescue Me was designed to be a creative platform for Recycle Now to build upon and make use of year-round, with a bigger focus during Recycle Week.
2024 - Launch of Rescue Me in collaboration with WRAP
We worked alongside WRAP to launch the campaign which included:
- A PR stunt at 10 Downing Street, with the characters in costumes holding picket signs demanding to be “rescued” from the bin
- A PR report
- Workshop in a Box, a schools resource that turns children into recycling advocates at home
2025 - Full campaign delivery, led by Behaviour Change
Behaviour Change took on end-to-end delivery – strategy, creative, media and PR – including a shift to heavier paid media spend, character development, and a focused PR push on toothpaste tubes. Working with long-term creative partner Among Equals, we developed a suite of campaign assets for paid and organic social media. For this, we brought the characters to life in funny videos voiced by well-known celebrities: Big John, Warwick Davis, Josie Gibson and Asim Chaudhry, giving each item a recognisable personality that helped the campaign cut through in paid and earned media alike.
To maximise reach beyond Recycle Now’s own channels and ensure consistency across the country, we developed a comprehensive partner toolkit which enabled hundreds of local authorities, retailers, brands and waste partners to deliver consistent messaging while tailoring communications to local services.
Impact
Rescue Me! has delivered measurable behaviour change across both years. Following the 2024 launch, national tracker data showed a 6% increase in recycling of the target items.
The 2025 phase built on this: self-reported missed capture of key recyclable items fell from 72% to 66%, a statistically significant reduction that exceeded campaign targets, with the campaign estimated to have influenced recycling behaviour among 3-5 million adults.
The campaign generated:
- 18.6 million paid media impressions
- 15.3 million PR reach
- 395 media mentions
- 6.4 million radio reach
- 180,000 organic social impressions
- 223 local authorities participating in Recycle Week activity
- 19 corporate partners amplifying campaign messages
Local authority engagement increased by 440% compared with the previous year, demonstrating the value of providing partners with high-quality, evidence-led communications tools that could be adapted for local contexts.
Rescue Me! continues as an always-on platform, with the campaign building again for Recycle Week 2026.