Barley blog: There’s more to food waste than wonky veg

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*Big sigh*

*Eye roll*

*Silent weeping*

On Saturday the cross-party Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Committee released a report on food waste and it was a fairly depressing read. Food waste reductions have stalled.

How is it that 10 years on from the launch of Love Food Hate Waste – when the front pages of national newspapers were screaming out about the shocking levels of UK food waste – we’ve made such little progress? And why is it only now that a recommendation for a formal national food waste target is being put forward?

What I found particularly interesting is that aside from the BBC, practically every other national media outlet reporting on the launch of the report this weekend led on the angle about the sale of wonky veg in supermarkets.

Households produce 71% of post-farmgate waste, whilst retailers produce 2%. Yes, retailers do have a very important part to play and there is a lot of work to do in terms of supply chains and distribution but by far the media focus has been here and not on households.

We love blaming businesses but it’s imperative we look closer to home. Our homes. Where we chuck out hundreds of pounds worth of food every year.

Food Waste is a topic very close to my heart – I helped launch the Love Food Hate Waste campaign for WRAP back in 2007.  Part of this campaign’s success is that it didn’t wag the finger. Instead it provided positive and practical solutions and worked in collaboration with many other organisations, an approach we take with our client Hubbub on #PumpkinRescue and other engaging seasonal food waste campaigns.

I was pleased to see the select committee recommend that “the Government examine how lessons on food and food waste can be incorporated as part of the school curriculum”. But is a “lesson on food” the same as cookery? Many adults now don’t have the basic cookery skills or knowledge to use up leftovers themselves, so what hope does the next generation have? In my view, we need to get kids cooking in school and in the home and that’s supported by the research we conducted for Hubbub’s #CookSomethingGrand campaign, which found that a shocking 45% of 16 year olds have never cooked a family meal.  Perhaps we need a little less focus on nutritional theory and a little more on bubble and squeak.

The EFRA report also highlighted that whilst there was high awareness around the issue of food waste, it’s not being translated into action by households. I’m encouraged to see that WRAP has a new strategy for the campaign but with such huge cuts in funding from Central Government and the Devolved Administrations over the past few years, they have a monumental challenge ahead to achieve their goals. With such a wide variety of audiences and reasons for wasting food, more investment is needed to ensure they have a hope of actually changing these entrenched habits.

More than ever WRAP needs its partners to deliver and help spread the message to consumers. To innovate, to inspire collective action and to incentivise.

Whatever the outcome of the upcoming election, let’s hope the new Government prioritises the issue of food waste and in another 10 years I’m feeling a little more positive. And my teenage boys are cooking me dinner.

Laura Harrison, Associate, Barley Communications

Squaring the circle on coffee cup recycling

Did you know that the UK gets through a staggering 7 million disposable paper cups a day – that’s 2.5 billion cups every year – yet less than 1% of these are currently recycled?

We’ve been helping sustainability charity Hubbub launch their #SquareMileChallenge initiative to tackle the issue in London’s Square Mile. This pioneering collaboration with Simply Cups brings together the City of London Corporation, Network Rail, coffee cup manufacturers and major coffee retailers – Caffè Nero, Costa, Marks & Spencer, McDonald’s, Nestlé, Pret A Manger and Starbucks. Over 250 new recycling points are now in place across the City – on the streets, in stations, in coffee shops and in offices.

We developed a two phase media strategy aligned with the strategic objectives of the campaign. The first phase in January 2017 raised awareness of the initiative and targeted businesses around the City to sign up to workplace coffee cup collections. The story was covered in The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Mail, along with extensive reach in London and specialist media and wide sharing on social media – leading to a further 34 major businesses signing up to take part in the challenge.

The second phase launched on 3rd April 2017 with the goals of engaging consumers in the City of London to recycle their cups, along with continued awareness raising on a national level to pave the way for a wider roll out of the scheme.

In the run up to the launch we worked with Hubbub on creative ideas to engage City workers and residents.  Check out Hubbub’s behind the scenes vlog, for more on this…

 

These were also used as a backdrop for our media activities and helped achieve fantastic coverage, including interviews on BBC Breakfast and articles in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and The Sun. We were also delighted the story was picked up in virtually every London media outlet from BBC London TV news and radio to the Evening Standard, Metro, City AM and Timeout. Social media sharing was extensive, supported by engaging video content, with #SquareMileChallenge trending in London on the day of the launch.

We look forward to sharing more good news when the cups are counted.

Barley blog: Jobs for the girls

Well hello and a very happy International Women’s Day to you.  Isn’t it a joy to be a working woman in 2017, now we’ve sorted out all that nasty sexual inequality that our mothers and grandmothers fought so hard against?

Not buying it?  Me neither.

Earlier this month the CIPR issued their latest report on the State of the Profession, which contains some interesting insights on gender.  The male/female balance in the PR industry is shifting, but women still make up 61% of the workforce and the CIPR found the average difference between male and female earnings is £12,316.  It could be argued that some of this difference is because there are more men in senior roles, making the issue a mix of a pay and progression gap.

The next bit is where the statistician in me got really interested – these figures were then subjected to regression analysis that took into account other factors that might impact salary, such as years in PR and seniority.  This revealed a true gender pay gap in PR, in other words the gap that cannot be explained by any of the other factors tested for in the survey, of £5,784.  That’s right, nearly £6k of pay gap purely down to not having the right pants filling.  Tough break ladies.

Here’s my punt as to what lies behind some of this.  I’d make a reasonably sizeable bet on a whole heap of discrimination against working mums.  I daresay much of this is not intentional, but I’ve certainly seen plenty of bias, conscious or otherwise, against this group.

In my former life in finance and HR, I spent many years on boards discussing pay reviews and promotions, often when budgets were tight and tough decisions had to be made.  I’ve hardly ever heard a man’s family situation discussed in relation to a pay rise, other than an odd occasion when it’s been suggested that his getting married or having children might mean we needed to give him a bit more money.

With women, my experience is that it’s the exact opposite.  Male and female colleagues alike have often been heard to utter that dreadful phrase “she’s not going anywhere” just before the woman in question gets knocked off of the pay rise list or, worse still, finds her way onto the redundancy list.

And good luck to those women who choose to work part time.  Many’s the occasion I’ve had to explain that pro-rating a full time salary down to part-time does not involve taking the figure you would pay a full-time man in the same role, adjusting it for the number of days a woman works and then knocking a chunk off because you feel you can get away with it.

When James and I set up Barley, the first two people who joined us as Associates were the utterly brilliant Laura Harrison and Sarah Skinner.  Both had taken time out with their young children and were now ready to get stuck back in to work.  Both did fantastic work before they went on maternity leave and continue to do so now.  We’re lucky to have them as part of team Barley and the same can be said for all of the other working parents we have the pleasure of working with.

Maybe both being parents ourselves makes a difference to our viewpoint.  Maybe it helps that we don’t have an office, which means we have more flexibility around hours worked once you cut out the need for a regular commute.  There’s no real advantage to having one in this day and age, when we can easily connect with our team and clients whenever and wherever we like, without the need for a cumbersome cost base that needs to be reflected in unnecessarily high fees.

It seems to me that a very simple way to tackle the oft reported talent crisis in our industry would be to value our working mums more.  Those brilliant women who’ve invested years in honing their skills and experience certainly don’t become any less valuable when you layer in all those extra time-management and negotiation skills you acquire when you become a parent.

If there’s one place we could start, maybe it’s with the phrase: working mum.  It drives me a bit nuts.  How many men have you ever heard referred to as a working dad?  I’d suggest banning its use when discussing pay could go some way to evening things out.

Sam Williams, Partner, Barley Communications

Barley blog: When not to protect your client’s reputation

Close Up Of Children's Feet In Soccer MatchThe last two weeks have seen hundreds of survivors of child sexual abuse in football come forward, in some cases waiving their right to anonymity to raise awareness of the issue.  At the time of writing, 17 police forces are investigating allegations of historical and current abuse within football and the NSPCC has revealed that referrals from calls to their football abuse hotline more than tripled the amount made in the first three days of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

In a recent piece on Radio 4, a comment from Jim Gamble, the former Chief Executive of anti-paedophile agency CEOP struck a chord with me.  He cautioned against football clubs “putting reputation before children”.  With further accusations of cover ups arising throughout the week, it’s left me wondering whether PR agencies are part of the problem.

There is big money to be made in crisis communications – defending clients against media storms when the proverbial hits the fan.  PRs will often find themselves privy to confidential information which could destroy their clients’ reputations were it in the public domain.  Often, there are tough decisions to be made as to which clients an agency is willing to represent.

It is for each agency to decide which clients they are comfortable taking on.  My own lines in the sand have, in the past, been drawn at the fur and arms trades and I know others who have chosen not to work with the meat industry or tourism accounts for countries where it is illegal to be gay.  I would hope that most agencies have the flexibility to allow their people to opt out of working on clients which clash with their individual moral and ethical values.

However, this goes beyond ethics.  My concern is whether our industry is playing a part in protecting the reputations of institutions, at the expense of putting an end to the horrific abuse that has persisted for decades.  The impact of such abuse cannot be over-estimated.  Through our work with the Clinic for Dissociative Studies we see the lifelong devastation that comes from the sexual abuse of children.  Every day that an abuse is not reported, the abuser remains at liberty to shatter more lives.

As the chairman of the FA Greg Clarke said this week “Institutionally, all organisations in the old days used to protect themselves by keeping quiet and closing ranks. That’s completely inappropriate and unacceptable today.”

I urge my fellow agency heads to review their relationships with any institutions that might be embroiled in current and future abuse allegations and consider whether it is right to continue to protect their reputations.  They should also make it clear to their staff that their duty of care is more important than client fees.  Any individual with concerns over their clients’ behaviour should keep notes which include times, dates and records of conversations and report anything you believe to be illegal at the earliest opportunity.

The NSPCC’s football abuse helpline can be called 24 hours a day on 0800 023 2642.

Sam Williams, Partner, Barley Communications

Barley blog: Would you accept a CV with typos?

keyboard

For the last few months a disabled friend of mine, Dave Crowl, has been sending me emails with 0s in place of Os. I didn’t give it much thought until I spoke with Dave about it: the letter o on his keyboard has given up. Dave, a charity fundraiser, who has cerebral palsy, has learned to adapt. With his keyboard out of production, he ploughs on with his existing kit:

H0pe u are all well! Fancy a pint and the f00ty 0n Friday night? We c0uld meet in a b00zer in the h00d 0r in t0wn?

Does this affect his ability to communicate? Well no – not with me but would I be as accommodating if the emails were about something other than beer and football? Probably not. I think most people would agree that the need for professional IT and digital skills – and the appropriate kit – are more important than ever for workers today.

Charities like U Can Do IT provide hundreds of disabled people with IT training enabling them to get into the workplace and Stoll (a client) offers a similar service aimed specifically at disabled Veterans with great results, including getting Veterans into civilian jobs.

These schemes and others like them are vital if the government’s benefits cap, which comes into force this week, has the effect of shifting more people into work.  Given the news on the state of personal finances (see BBC), this is going to be anything but easy. Most of us will be able to ride out the inflationary pressures of a falling pound. But higher costs coupled with reductions in benefits will be a bitter pill to swallow for many people on benefits.

In the meantime Dave is looking for work. So if you receive a CV with a surprising number of zeros sprawled across it, you will understand why.

James Ford, Partner, Barley Communications