How a trade org is using a conservation icon to promote battery recycling

The year is 1971. John Lennon’s “Imagine” was taking over the airwaves and NPR had just started broadcasting when Secretary of Agriculture Clifford Hardin introduced Woodsy Owl, a new conservation mascot aimed at encouraging Americans to curb pollution. Hardin hoped that Woodsy would educate the masses about the consequences of pollution, as Smokey Bear did for forest fires.

In the last 55 years, Woodsy has inspired multiple generations of conservationists through memorable and nostalgia-inducing television PSAs. But just as Woodsy’s appearance has changed over the years, so has his pet issue. When he debuted, his slogan was “Give a hoot, don’t pollute!” A few years later Woodsy pivoted to “Lend a hand, care for the land!” And this year, he’s got a fresh, modernized refrain that fits our high-tech world full of battery-powered devices: “Skip the bin, turn your batteries in!”

Woodsy’s latest enterprise is the result of a new campaign with the National Waste & Recycling Association, a trade organization that represents the private-sector waste and recycling industry. The campaign educates the public on how batteries should be disposed of: not tossed into the garbage or recycling bin, but turned in at specific drop-off locations to be properly and safely recycled. When batteries are mixed in with trash or curbside recycling materials, they can cause fires, which many NWRA members are increasingly experiencing at waste and recycling facilities.

Woodsy—in his Airstream trailer—is touring the US this year to host battery recycling drop-off events.

Licensing Woodsy

Collaborating with Woodsy for the campaign was the brainchild of Genevieve O’Sullivan, NWRA’s SVP and chief of communications. When she was tasked with coming up with a national PSA around battery safety to educate the public on how improperly discarded batteries can cause home, trash, and recycling facility fires, she immediately thought about the “conservation icon.”

“I was like, ‘I wonder what Woodsy Owl is doing,’” O’Sullivan told Morning Brew. “He went a little bit quiet since the early ’90s.”

Getting Woodsy involved meant licensing his likeness from the US Forest Service, where he’s been managed by National Symbols Program Manager Iris Velez since 2003. Velez told Morning Brew in a statement that per the Woodsy Owl Act of 1974, the character’s image and message can be licensed to advance his objectives of “anti-littering and environmental conservation.” The NWRA licensed Woodsy for two years, and this is the first time the character has ever been part of a campaign outside the Forest Service.

Messaging and direction

In addition to getting messaging approved by Velez, the NWRA also wanted to keep the campaign’s rhetoric simple and avoid the word “recycle” because the public so closely associates it with home recycling bins.

“And we’re trying to avoid having any specific chemistry discussion, because as soon as you start talking [about] alkaline or nickel metal hydride, or lithium, people start getting confused,” Anne Germain, NWRA’s chief of technical and regulatory affairs, said during a panel at CES earlier this month. “We’re just saying ‘all batteries, turn them in.’”

The second part of the equation is providing information about where folks can turn in their batteries, which NWRA is doing through a dedicated website peppered with images of Woodsy alongside battery safety tips, games, and quizzes. There’s also a link to find nationwide battery drop-off locations through the Battery Network, an aggregator that works to connect drop-off locations with vetted battery recycling facilities. The company is also partnering with NWRA for Woodsy’s drop-off events.

“[NWRA] wanted to get more people to use our service, which is great,” Battery Network CEO Leo Raudys told Morning Brew.

Working with NWRA has also given the Battery Network a nationwide marketing opportunity, and the chance to encourage the public to be “less cynical” about battery recycling, Raudys said.

“This is going to help us to explain to people that [batteries do] get recycled,” he said. “With lithium ion batteries, you can get about 70+ percent material recovery.”

Taking flight

Woodsy’s latest campaign officially launched at CES, but NWRA has already held drop-off events in Illinois, Washington, and Washington, DC—all of which have passed laws that require batteries to be properly recycled and disposed of. NWRA’s O’Sullivan said the events were “hugely successful because people have been holding on to batteries forever and they don’t know what to do with them.” Thus far, the org has already collected thousands of pounds of batteries.

“There’s so much interest and so much education that’s happened just talking to people,” O’Sullivan said of the campaign’s initial events. “Part of it is the ‘aha moment’ that people have, where they went, ‘Oh my god, I’ve been throwing them away...I just didn’t know.’”