When chatting to 12 councils across Sydney, it turned out they all had a common enemy: plastic bags. People put recycling in plastic bags before putting it in the bin, rendering it unrecyclable and headed to landfill. We needed to change this behaviour, and the dry subject matter required a bit of a new approach to get cut through.

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We combined 80s nostalgia, horror, and putting cute faces on things, to create the opening titles to a sitcom featuring a recyclable family; these slowly descend into chaos as plastic bags take over and “murder” The Recyclins, destroying the credits and bringing the catchy theme tune to a grinding halt. The idea was bizarre but also simple: plastic bags are the death of recycling, so take your recycling out of plastic bags.

We scoured the internet for ingredients that would help sell the campaign. We knew 80s nostalgia was big, thanks to Stranger Things and a string of movie reboots. The same goes for horror and putting faces on inanimate objects. bringing these all together would give our internet-savvy audience recognisable, fun tropes to latch onto while they absorbed our message.

Paper Moose took care of the campaign right up till its very end, seeing it through from the creative all the way to media planning and roll out across social media, digital banners, print, and bin stickers.

The most un-council-ey campaign ever got incredible results, with people wtf-ing and lol-ing under a video that, essentially, was about recycling properly. Engagement was high, with our audience not just sharing and reacting to the video, but having entire conversations and replying to each other in the comments. More importantly, there were lots of people admitting they didn’t know this behaviour was wrong. And that song… no one can get that song out of their heads.

Nick Hunter
Jazz Twemlow
Reese Geronimo
Seaton Kay-Smith
Harrison Woodhead
Pete Foley
Jack Stephens

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which we create, the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.