SIRE. ‘RATE IT. REPAIR IT’

As communication professionals, we look forward to how SIRE will make us reflect on our society and our country each year. This fall, we’re proud to say we weren’t just on the sidelines, but actively supported SIRE and their ‘Rate it. Repair it’ campaign (‘Waardeer het. Repareer het’.‘). With this campaign, SIRE urges Dutch people to stop senselessly throwing out old products. As a country, we throw away 18 kilos of electric appliances, 15 kilos of textiles and 16 kilos of other trash, even though an estimated 25-50% of this ‘trash’ could be repaired. It’s a true waste, and it’s time to pay more attention to this issue.

Running up to the campaign, we conducted thorough research on how to best communicate the scale of the problem SIRE identified. With the help of professor dr. ir. Ruth Mugge, professor Design for Sustainable Consumer Behavior at TU Delft, we translated the results into a news story for the press. Besides writing a press release and creating an infographic, we shared SIRE’s story under embargo with our press contacts before the campaign went live. The results were great: all the important Dutch media outlets shared the story in their own way with their audience. NOS, RTL Nieuws, Nu.nl, De Volkskrant, het Algemeen Dagblad, national radio stations, and even the BBC wrote an article about it.