Client: Mpact Recycling | Role: Concept development, art direction, design, shoot direction

Global Recycling Day

The Challenge

South Africa’s recycling landscape is shifting. Households are consuming less, which means fewer recyclables entering the system. Lower volumes make competition among collectors more aggressive — and every kilogram counts.

At the same time, collection infrastructure has shrunk:

Recycling banks have been removed
Ronnie’s school programme is no longer active
Mpact operates only 14 branches and relies on over 100 dealer partners

With fewer touchpoints and tighter margins, the core question became:

Why would a collector choose Mpact
over Golden Era or any other buyer?

We needed a campaign that pushed behaviour, not just awareness.

Strategy & Idea

Global Recycling Day offered a useful moment — but not automatically a useful message.
To make it meaningful, the campaign had to bridge consumer behaviour and collector action.

Long-term aim

Shift the entire value chain toward higher collection volumes by targeting:

  • Collectors

  • Recycling suppliers

  • Dealers

  • Households and consumers

Short-term aim

Use Global Recycling Day to drive immediate action:

  • Motivate collectors and suppliers to bring correctly sorted material to Mpact

  • Give consumers a simple way to start recycling properly

  • Reinforce Mpact’s role as the reliable, structured part of the recycling value chain

The creative line anchored everything:

“Get recyclables to the right place.
Whatever it takes.”

It’s directive, simple, and frames recycling as a shared responsibility — not a corporate message.

Creative Response

I led the creative development and visual execution from the ground up.

My contributions included:

  • Full campaign concept development

  • Art direction and design system

  • Layouts, visual hierarchy, colour system and typographic approach

  • Direction of tone, movement and narrative flow for video

  • On-set direction to guide performance, framing, and visual continuity

  • Build-out of social formats, including reels, educational posts and multi-frame assets

The design was intentionally clean and instructional — clear iconography, simple movement, and messaging that gave each audience group a direct action to take:

  • Consumers: “Use the Waste Classification Guide”

  • Collectors/Suppliers: “Find an Mpact branch or dealer”

Execution (filming, animation and edit) was produced using the framework and visual language I established.

Results & Impact

Even with softer Global Recycling Day benchmarks, the campaign achieved what it needed to: clarity, direction and action.

  • Strong reel performance relative to GRD norms

  • High click-throughs to the Waste Classification Guide

  • Meaningful traffic to Find a Branch / Dealer

  • Positive sentiment and good engagement across platforms

  • Internal feedback showing better sorting behaviour at branch level

The success wasn’t in volume — it was in precision: getting people to do the right thing, in the right place.

Outcome & Learnings

The campaign repositioned GRD for Mpact as a practical, behavioural prompt rather than an annual awareness ritual.

It aligned collectors, suppliers and consumers around a single intention:
make recycling easier, cleaner and more accurate — whatever it takes.

The concept now serves as a platform Mpact can scale into future education and sorting initiatives.

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