Context

How can you teach an entire country to recycle?

In January 2021, a national law for waste separation and recycling came into effect in Colombia using three bags: white (recyclable waste), black (non-recyclable waste), and green (organic waste).

But more than teaching Colombians, the law only confused them further, and worse, resulted in an increase in plastic consumption. Furthermore, as retailers, we are required to deliver our deliveries in plastic bags, which led us to think about how we could be part of the solution, not the problem.

Idea

What comes in the bag, you throw away in the bag.

We turned a difficult-to-understand law into an easy-to-use solution for everyone, giving a second use to an item we are required to produce for our e-commerce: grocery bags.

EXECUTION

We completely redesigned our bags; we changed them to the three colors stipulated by law, and we made them available on our e-commerce site. Every order placed through tiendasmetro.co was packaged and delivered so that users knew that whatever came in that bag was disposed of in that bag.

To support this initiative, we also launched audiovisual content demonstrating the correct use of our bags and ran an organic digital campaign that featured them. With this, we managed to simplify a law for everyone, but most importantly, we taught 1,000 Colombian families every day for a month how to recycle correctly and encouraged them to reduce plastic consumption.