Behavior Change

For the behavior change portion of the Permit, the City has selected to be a part of the Regional Dumpster Lid Campaign addressing the BMP of Dumpster and Trash Compactor Maintenance and the target audience of Commercial Businesses.  The strategy and schedule for the new Dumpster Lid behavior change campaign was completed on February 1st 2021 as required by the Permit of the new behavior change strategy began April 1st, 2021.

The new behavior change strategy was developed using the Social Marketing 10 Step Strategic Planning Model.  Through this process and the collection of local data on barriers, benefits and motivators, the decision was made by the regional group to focus on the specific effort of closing dumpster lids every time for commercial businesses.  The ultimate goal of this collaboration through the regional group is to reduce stormwater pollution to surface waters through social marketing methods that motivate commercial businesses within the NPDES geographic coverage area to keep dumpster lids closed.  The City of Tacoma will implement the basic toolkit package developed through multi-jurisdictional collaboration.  The basic toolkit items will be tested for effectiveness through traditional social marketing methods during a pilot campaign implementation and evaluation.  The City of Tacoma will continue participation in multi-jurisdictional meetings to ensure consistent pilot phase implementation and evaluation.  Throughout the campaign, the City of Tacoma will track activities and provide input on the pilot campaign to inform the project evaluation and a long-term implementation plan.

Conducting a pilot campaign is a recommended step in traditional Social Marketing (Implementation) and community-based social marketing (Step 4). Piloting the campaign provides an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of social marketing strategies and adapt them before implementing a campaign broadly. The pilot campaign was completed May 2021.  The following is a list of key outcomes from a 6-month pilot campaign:

• Dumpster lid closure significantly improved from campaign outreach. The percentage of lids closed rose from 49% during the baseline evaluation to 77% during the final evaluation.

• The final lid closure rate for businesses participating in the pilot rose 57% over baseline observations.

• Over 30 jurisdictions participating in the campaign realized substantial cost savings due to economy of scale and staff time savings through leveraging the experience and knowledge of regional E&O staff.

• Nearly 150 businesses throughout the region were provided educational materials and tools.

• Over 100 dumpster areas across the Puget Sound were evaluated before and after the pilot campaign implementation

With the completion of the pilot phase and due to lack of funding for the regional group, individual jurisdictions are proceeding independently with the dumpster lid campaign implementation.  The City is currently developing a strategy for continuing the dumpster lid campaign and outreach to local businesses.