Project
LA Sanitation & Environment – Citywide Organics Outreach Campaign
Delivering Multilingual Organics Recycling Education Across Los Angeles Communities
Project Type : Community Outreach | Online Advertising | Multilingual Marketing | Government Communications
Location: Los Angeles, California
Client: City of Los Angeles – LA Sanitation & Environment
Duration: February 2025 – September 2026
Opportunity
Los Angeles faced a communications challenge as complex as the city itself. Under California’s organics recycling requirements, residents were being asked to change a deeply ingrained household behavior by separating food scraps and other organic waste from the trash. But knowing what to do was only part of the problem. For many Angelenos, organics recycling was still unfamiliar, easy to misunderstand, or simply not top of mind in the routines of daily life.
LASAN needed to do more than explain a new requirement. It needed to make organics recycling feel simple, relevant and worth doing across one of the most diverse cities in the country. That meant reaching residents across different neighborhoods, cultures, languages, media habits and levels of familiarity with the program, while translating a policy-driven mandate into practical actions people could understand and adopt at home.
The opportunity was to build a citywide campaign that could turn awareness into participation at scale. LASAN set out to create an inclusive, multilingual outreach effort that would meet residents where they were, reinforce the behavior across multiple channels, and show how everyday actions in the kitchen connect to a larger environmental outcome. The goal was not simply to tell Angelenos about organics recycling, but to help make it a normal part of how Los Angeles handles food waste.
Approach
Create the OrganicsLA Communications Framework
TRC’s approach is to build campaign messaging around audience research, operational realities, and culturally responsive communication. Four residential focus groups and twelve restaurant interviews informed TRC where information gaps were in the audience and influenced the OrganicsLA Messaging and Branding Guide, including audience personas, multilingual messaging guidance, tone-of-voice standards, and campaign-wide visual identity recommendations.
The project team developed copy, layouts, and creative direction for restaurant flyers, residential outreach materials, event signage, refuse truck graphics, educational toolkits, social media campaigns, and public service announcements. Campaign messaging was adapted across 15 languages to support accessibility and consistency across Los Angeles communities.
Develop Multilingual Educational Content for a Diverse Community
TRC developed a large-scale library of multilingual educational assets for use across digital advertising, public outreach, and community engagement activities. Production included more than 300 original photo and video assets, a 90-second full lifecycle educational video, 53 short-form educational reels, multilingual static advertisements, toolkit materials, and outreach collateral.
Photo and video shoots documented residential food sorting behaviors, restaurant operations, compost processing facilities, and agricultural end-use sites across Los Angeles County and Bakersfield. All assets were designed for long-term reuse across LASAN campaigns, events, presentations, and educational materials.
Run a 15-Language Paid Campaign Across 5 Platforms
TRC developed, managed, analyzed and optimized a three-phase online advertising campaign across Meta, Google (including YouTube), TikTok, LinkedIn, and Nextdoor. Campaign creative was localized into 15 languages and tailored to audience segments spanning lifestyles, generations, job roles, and languages, so each message reached its community in a relevant and accessible form.
Phase 1 educated Angelenos on why the green bin matters. Short-form video and photo carousel ads traced the journey of LA’s food scraps from kitchens and restaurants to composting facilities and on to California farms that grow new food. Phase 2 showed Angelenos when to use the green bin through simple, relatable messaging. Short videos and photography captured everyday routines like meal prep, after-meal cleanups, and morning coffee grounds.
Phase 3 turned awareness into action with downloadable, printable tools: a fridge flyer on what belongs in the bin, one-page guides, and audience-specific toolkits with signage, tenant notices, and ready-to-share social posts.
Across all three phases, the campaign generated more than 68 million impressions, 198,000 clicks, and 21 million video plays, with Meta and TikTok driving the most engagement.
Create Community Outreach and Event Materials
The project team extended the newly established “Green Bin It, LA” brand into a cohesive suite of community outreach materials designed to attract attention, explain the organics recycling process, and reinforce proper green bin participation. Branded canopies, banners, flags, table displays, stickers, QR-enabled materials, and interactive event concepts created a highly visible presence at community events while helping residents understand the full journey of food scraps, from the kitchen to compost used on California farms.
Bold typography, vibrant photography from the OrganicsLA library, and the program’s signature color palette created a consistent and immediately recognizable presence across Los Angeles. Once residents were drawn into the space, materials such as the canopy infowall used simple visuals to explain what belongs in the green bin, why participation matters, and how food scraps are transformed into a useful resource. Every touchpoint reinforced the same core behavior and message, giving LASAN a flexible event system that could work across festivals, neighborhood events, and other community settings.
TRC also developed promotional items that residents would continue using after an event ended, extending the campaign into everyday routines. Rather than selecting generic giveaways, the team chose items connected to food preparation and storage, including branded vegetable peelers and reusable bento boxes. Professor Green refrigerator magnets and temporary tattoos further supported LASAN’s educational efforts, particularly around the Professor Green pilot and Earth Day outreach. Each item carried the “Green Bin It, LA” message or connected residents back to LASAN resources, creating repeated reminders to put food scraps in the green bin.
Increase Visibility Through Strategic Media Placement
TRC pitched and developed a feature with Spectrum News 1 (Follow the journey organic material takes once it enters a green bin) highlighting the LASAN organics program through the full food cycle journey from residents’ kitchens and local restaurants to the city’s recycling facility. TRC coordinated a three-location shoot across Los Angeles, managing logistics, spokesperson preparation, scheduling, and media access to execute the production. Through interviews with an LASAN official, a homeowner, and a restaurant entrepreneur, the broadcast demonstrated how residents and businesses make the green bin part of their daily routine at home and at work, encouraging viewers to participate in this community-wide sustainability effort.
Results
Changing an everyday habit in a city as large and diverse as Los Angeles means reaching people in the languages they speak and within the context of their daily lives. The Green Bin It, LA campaign was built to do exactly that, carrying one clear, consistent message: food scraps belong in the green bin to Angelenos across generations, neighborhoods, languages, and lifestyles.
By guiding audiences from why organics recycling matters, to when and how to use the green bin, to the practical tools that make participation easier, the campaign turned awareness into action. It met residents and business owners where they already spend time online, delivering relevant, accessible messages that gave Angelenos both a reason to participate and a clear path to make green bin habits part of everyday life.
68M+
Impressions Generated
21M+
Video Views
127K+
Ad Clicks to Website
Contact
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