Our latest Be Mighty. Recycle. post-campaign survey (March 2025) shows just how much of a difference relevant, consistent communication can make in helping people across Wales waste less food and recycle more.
The survey, carried out by WRAP, interviewed 1,411 adults across Wales with responsibility for recycling in their homes. Responses were weighted to ensure a representative sample by age, gender, and region. This gives us robust insights into how recycling and food waste behaviours are changing across the nation.
Be Mighty. Recycle. is Wales’ largest and most impactful recycling behaviour change campaign delivered by WRAP Cymru through the Wales Recycles brand and is funded by Welsh Government. It plays a key role in driving the nation’s journey towards becoming zero-waste by 2050 and helping boost Wales towards the number one spot in the world for recycling.
Why focus on food waste?
Since 2023, the campaign has focused on food waste – the area where there is the potential to make the greatest impact in Wales: A quarter of the average Welsh rubbish bin is still made up of food, and most of it could have been eaten (Compositional Analysis of Municipal Waste in Wales 2022).
Our approach is pioneering, targeting two behaviours through one campaign: food waste prevention with recycling. It empowers people to use up all the food they buy with simple, flexible recipes - saving time and money, while making sure that anything that can’t be eaten is recycled to create renewable energy.
The food campaigns have been rolled out across 5 bursts, gradually transitioning from a recycling-only focus in February 2023 into a fully integrated food waste prevention and recycling campaign. Each burst has built on the learnings of the last, bringing in fresh content, most recently, family-focused videos from Joanna Page, to keep audiences engaged while reinforcing consistent messages and building momentum.
The impact in Spring 2025
The results show that the campaign is making waves, delivering sustained behavioural change. Key findings include:
- Recycling participation increased: Household food waste recycling participation increased from 80% in March 2024 to 86% in March 2025, a significant uplift in just one year.
- High campaign reach: Over half (51%) engaged with the campaign, with particularly high reach among key audience groups, including young adults (18-24: 69% and 25-34: 74% reached) and families with children at home (69% reached).
- Strong awareness: 71% recalled seeing messages about food waste or recycling, with videos and social media content performing particularly well.
- Clear behaviour change: Nearly three quarters (74%) of those who saw the campaign did something differently – wasting less food, recycling more, starting to use their service, or throwing less food in the rubbish bin.
- Impact where it matters most: Among those who saw the campaign, 51% used up more food that might have been wasted, 71% felt more motivated to recycle food waste more often or more carefully, 17% started using their food waste collection service, and 46% threw less food into the rubbish bin.
Why it worked
The campaign succeeded because it tapped into real-life pressures and motivations, especially among time-poor younger adults and families. By identifying the sweet spot between prevention and recycling, it used audience-led messaging delivered through the right channels to make the behaviours feel simple, relevant, and achievable.
While there are four main competencies for tackling food waste – meal prep, planning, shopping, and storage – meal prep is the key behaviour moment where prevention and recycling naturally come together, so it became the campaign’s focus.
The campaign made it easy for people to waste less, recycle more, and feel the benefits in their daily lives. Flexible, easy recipes showed how to use up all the food you buy (saving time and money), while reinforcing that anything inedible belongs in the food waste caddy to be recycled into renewable energy.
Why the campaign resonated:
- Getting the behaviour right: Positioning meal prep as the key moment helped people naturally combine prevention and recycling – cooking smart to use up food and recycling what can’t be eaten to create power.
- Motivations: People responded to messages around saving money, reducing waste, generating green energy from their food waste and helping to get Wales to No.1.
- Relevance: The campaign reached audiences under time pressure – especially 18–35-year-olds and families with children, and successfully engaged both existing recyclers and those who weren’t previously participating.
- Clear impact storytelling: Showing how food waste powers homes across Wales, paired with real people cooking inspiring dishes, built trust and motivation.
- Momentum through repetition: Delivering the campaign in multiple bursts proved crucial – each phase built on the last, reinforcing behaviours and steadily driving up participation and motivation over time.
Barriers and opportunities
While the campaign has delivered the strongest results to date, there are still challenges:
- Clarity: Almost half of people (47%) are still unsure what happens to food waste once collected.
- Perceptions of unpleasantness: Around one in five (22%) feel that food recycling is “unpleasant” – a stubborn barrier that needs continued tackling. Although this is something that is not tackled through the campaign.
- Planning: The competency that needs more work. Exploring through the campaign how it can be subtle tackled through the campaign.
- Audiences: Continue targeting the key audiences that need the most support: Young adults, families, and WRAP’s segments 6 and 7s.
These remain opportunities to build on in future bursts, keeping momentum high and strengthening positive behaviour change.
Looking ahead
The March 2025 campaign was rated highly by those who engaged with it, achieved impressive reach, and drove measurable shifts in behaviour. By combining consistent messaging that build momentum through each burst with fresh content, Be Mighty. Recycle. continues to prove that relevant, ongoing, insights-led communication can inspire real, lasting change, helping Wales get ever closer to becoming the world’s number one recycling nation.
Taking it to the next level: The next campaign, running from 22 September to 19 October, will build on this success by continuing building on the messaged and audiences, while also taking the behaviour up a notch.
With recycling habits more firmly embedded, the focus will gently expand into smarter, healthier meal prep – encouraging audiences to prep simple base dishes in advance and flex them across the week.
By showing how easy, nutritious meals can be created from whatever ingredients are on hand, we’ll help boost confidence in light planning, reinforce the benefits of cook-once, serve-multiple-times meals, and make it second nature to recycle what can’t be eaten.