ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT

TO:

Standing Committee on City Services and Budgets

FROM:

General Manager of Engineering Services

SUBJECT:

Sponsorship of the City's Blue Recycling Bags

 

RECOMMENDATION

COMMENTS

POLICY

PURPOSE

The purpose of this report is to obtain Council approval for the sponsorship of the City's blue recycling bags as required in section (i) of the City's sponsorship policy. The report also outlines three other sponsorship proposals that have been received and seeks authority to reject them.

BACKGROUND

In late 2001, staff received an unsolicited proposal from TrashBusters, a small rubbish removal company, to advertise on the City's yellow recycling bag. Staff were also aware of an arrangement where the North Shore News newspaper sponsors the blue recycling bag for the North Shore municipalities by providing advertising space in the North Shore News for those municipalities to use. Staff were interested in setting up a similar arrangement with one or more of Vancouver's local newspapers.

Before proceeding any further with these two proposals, staff issued a public "Request for Expressions of Interest" document that solicited proposals for sponsorship of the Solid Waste Division's programs. This document was publicly advertised and allowed any other companies or organizations to submit sponsorship proposals. This satisfied the requirement of following the City's normal purchasing practices and policies contained in section (c) of the City's sponsorship policy (see Appendix A). The public solicitation for proposals also tested the potential market for this type of arrangement and will allow us to take advantage of any offers we receive in the near future without carrying out another public process.

Aside from the two proposals for the blue and yellow recycling bags, two additional proposals were received as a result of the "Expressions of Interest" document. One proposal was from Munimedia in Toronto, offering to produce a large garbage and recycling collection calendar for the City by placing their clients' advertising in the calendar. The other proposal was from Blacktop Marketing in Toronto, offering to buy all the advertising space on the City's garbage, recycling and yard trimmings trucks for their clients.

DISCUSSION

The City's Blue and Yellow Recycling Bags
The City's residential blue box recycling collection program serves about 96,000 dwelling units. The blue box program takes mixed rigid containers in the blue box, newsprint in the blue recycling bag and paper and cardboard in the yellow recycling bag. Residents keep therecycling bags at their home, placing newsprint, paper and cardboard in the bags, then set the bags out for the materials to be collected. The empty bags are left behind for reuse by the resident. The City distributes about 28,000 replacement blue bags and 28,000 replacement yellow bags each year to residents upon request when the bags have been lost or become unusable.

Vancouver Courier Newspaper - Blue Recycling Bag
The Vancouver Courier newspaper has agreed to sponsor the City's replacement blue recycling bags. Under the proposed arrangement, the City will place text and graphics saying "This Bag Sponsored by the Vancouver Courier", along with the Courier's name/logo, a short slogan and a phone number on one side of 112,000 replacement blue recycling bags over the next four years. There will be an option for either party to end the arrangement at the end of each year. The City will also place this same text and graphics on other blue box promotional materials, such as our web page, collection calendars and brochures. The proposed layout of the blue bag is shown in Appendix B. In return, the Courier will provide the City with $12,000 of advertising or editorial space in the Courier each time we have 28,000 bags manufactured (the yearly bag order) for the City to use for the promotion of waste reduction and other environmental issues within the following year. The Courier's proposed sponsorship of the blue bag is to be exclusive for English language print media, but allows for similar partnerships with any of our local ethnic newspapers, even if the ethnic newspaper publishes in English.

Other details of the proposal include the Courier having a link from their web page to the City's blue box program information and for the Courier to participate in some of the environmental promotions and events the City runs. The Courier has already been a media sponsor of the City's "Keep Vancouver Spectacular" (KVS) community cleanup program for the last two years, donating ad space to solicit and thank cleanup volunteers in return for having their company name/logo on the KVS promotional materials. The Courier also currently donates some free advertising space for the dog pound and the anti-graffiti program.

Staff consider the arrangement with the Vancouver Courier to be closer to sponsorship or an environmental partnership, rather than advertising. The Courier is a non-subscription newspaper, so the value of advertising on the blue bag to the Courier is limited. As well, there will be no overt solicitation for business on the blue bag.

The Other Three Proposals
The remaining three proposals have been reviewed by staff and are outlined briefly below. None of these three proposals are recommended by staff because they involve overt advertising and do not offer enough value to the City to warrant the negative impact on the City's image that might come with the advertising. Advertising can be controversial because it involves the tacit endorsement of the product being advertised on the City's equipment or publications.

TrashBusters - Yellow Recycling Bag
TrashBusters has offered the City about $7,000 a year for five years in return for putting their company advertising on the City's replacement yellow recycling bags. In addition to the potential negative implications of advertising on the City's image, staff are reluctant to have the City endorse or appear to endorse one particular rubbish removal company over another. Staff feel that the best value to the City will be to keep our own messages on the yellow bag.

Munimedia - Advertising in a Larger Garbage and Recycling Collection Calendar
Munimedia, a marketing firm in Toronto, has offered to produce a larger 32 page garbage and recycling collection calendar, similar to a typical 12 month calendar, for the City at about 27 cents a piece, not including postage. Staff feel that this larger calendar is an excellent idea because it would give us much more space to promote our waste reduction and environmental programs in a form that residents keep over the course of a year. But the 27 cents a piece is about what it would cost the City to print a calendar of this type ourselves, so the advertising revenue is just covering the cost of obtaining and administering the advertising, along with the cost of laying the calendar out. Staff feel that the City would obtain better value by doing this work in-house should we decide to develop a large collection calendar.

Blacktop Marketing - Advertising on Collection Trucks
Blacktop Marketing, a marketing firm in Toronto, has offered about $125,000 per year for all the advertising space on our garbage, recycling and yard trimmings trucks. This works out to about $2,700 per truck that is on the road. Staff feel that this revenue is not worth the potential negative impact on the image of our collection fleet.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
The Vancouver Courier proposal is a potential $12,000 a year value to the City and allows us to promote more education and awareness of waste reduction than our existing budget can fund. It is not proposed that the recycling education budget be reduced by an equivalent amount.

IMPLEMENTATION PLAN
We will run out of our existing supply of blue bags at the beginning of April 2003, so the distribution of the blue bags with the Courier's sponsorship would begin about then.

CONCLUSIONS
The proposal for the Vancouver Courier to sponsor the blue bag offers a potential $12,000 a year increase in the City's promotion of waste reduction programs and represents an arrangement that is closer to sponsorship rather than overt advertising. For those reasons, the General Manager of Engineering Services recommends approval of A. The other three proposals involve more overt advertising and the General Manager of Engineering Services recommends Council reject them as they do not offer enough value to the City to warrant the change in the City's image that would probably come with advertising.

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APPENDIX A

Sponsorship Policy
a. The City will ensure that it does not become involved in situations in which sponsors would be given, or be perceived to be given, preferential treatment outside of the sponsorship agreement.
b. The City will not enter into sponsorship agreements with a firm whose product or service presents an obvious conflict of interest with the mandate, policies or objectives of the City.
c. The City will solicit and evaluate sponsorship arrangements following its normal purchasing practices and policies to ensure that the public interest is protected at all times.
d. The City will maintain control over the planning and delivery of sponsorship activities, and decisions around such will be made exclusively on public service objectives.
e. The City will ensure that recognition of sponsors is designed so that it will not detract from the physical attributes of a location, event, or facility and service delivery. Decisions regarding the naming of a public building/facility after a private corporation or individual in return for a capital contribution will require the approval of City Council.
f. The City will consider the effect of its sponsorship initiatives on the not-for-profit sector and in particular those organizations which the City funds or have their own sponsors, and manage any conflicts to the extent practicable.
g. The City will maintain a file in the office of the City Clerk in the form of a publicly available list which outlines all sponsorship agreements in force. The terms and conditions of each specific agreement will be made available on request.
h. The City will conduct periodic reviews of its sponsorship initiatives to examine revenues raised, impacts on municipal services, the attitudes of the public and impacts on non-governmental organizations for public report back to Council.
i. All sponsorship proposals will be brought to City Council for discussion and approval.

LINK TO APPENDIX B

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