Like many other government entities across North America, Metro Nashville was working hard to reduce contamination rates, increase waste diversion and improve litter prevention. Understanding the importance of engaging residents to educate them about these topics, officials developed a service that would allow residents to receive reminders and educational content via email.
With rising recycling contamination rates and increased cost to manage the unwanted materials, officials at Metro Nashville knew that they needed to expand their methods of communication to reach a bigger audience. So they set out to explore the world of digital communications tools.
Iconic Place, Iconic Branding
Branding is very important to any organization, and with local government authorities, it’s no different. It offers credibility and consistency while allowing you to build trust and share strong messages. Being such an iconic place, it’s no surprise that branding is of utmost importance to Metro Nashville, so they turned to ReCollect Systems Inc. to have a tried and true solution developed.
Wanting to keep their branding front and center, Metro Nashville officials sought out ReCollect Systems, which provides custom branded web and mobile apps for waste and recycling digital communications. With an urgent need to get the project rolling and having had positive experiences with Sourcewell in the past, they chose to move forward using ReCollect’s Sourcewell contract. This met their procurement team’s needs and simplified the procurement process.
A few short months after procuring their digital tools through their Sourcewell contract, Metro Public Works launched the new application, called the Nashville Waste & Recycling App.
Celebrating Success
Shortly after launching, Special Projects Manager at Metro Waste Services Sharon Smith had this to say about the initiative “We think this is going to serve as a great tool for Nashville residents wanting easy, simple information about Metro’s waste and recycling program,”. “As Nashville continues to grow, we know how important trash and recycling updates and policies are to both established residents and newcomers.”
The Nashville Waste & Recycling app was sponsored by the “Nobody Trashes Tennessee” campaign with grant funding from the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
Metro Nashville officials recently announced that they achieved a 17.6% drop in their contamination rate. This speaks volumes about the work being done to improve their education and outreach over the past year. These efforts include, but are not limited to, website improvements, new digital communications tools, and community outreach using letters and postcards.
How does Sourcewell help?
Sourcewell has been facilitating cooperative purchasing and other services to government, education and non-profit organizations for over 40 years. ReCollect has been a Sourcewell-awarded vendor since 2017, combining deep expertise in solid waste and recycling with industry-leading communications technology for government and business organizations.
This means that government agencies can procure products produced by these vendors without creating their own Request for Proposal. Instead, they can piggyback on this international joint procurement vehicle to purchase more quickly, affordably, and easily.
“Don’t let procurement get in the way of progress. Working with government agencies for 20+ years, there is nothing more frustrating for us than not being able to help due to procurement burdens,” said Drew Rifkin, VP of Sales and Marketing at ReCollect. “The great news is that with Sourcewell, the procurement process is already done, so our customers can simply leverage it and focus on progress, and continue doing what they do best.”
Don’t duplicate the bidding process — with Sourcewell, the RFP is already done!
Wondering how we can help improve your waste and recycling programs or want to know more about how Sourcewell can help? Let’s talk!