The new initiative promoted by Consorzio di Bacino Alessandrino (the Alessandria District Waste Consortium) together with the City of Alessandria and Amag Ambiente puts real faces, direct language and community engagement at the centre of an effort to improve both the quality and quantity of urban recycling. Joining us on the project are Bewe and Paolo Bernardotti Studio.
In Alessandria, separate waste collection is trying to shift gear with a simple but powerful idea: letting the city speak in the voices of the people who live in it every day. That is the thinking behind “Why Not Us?”, the new awareness campaign promoted by Consorzio di Bacino Alessandrino (the Alessandria District Waste Consortium), together with the City of Alessandria and Amag Ambiente, developed by Amapola in partnership with Bewe and with support from Paolo Bernardotti Studio.
The message is clear: “We’ve stepped up for a cleaner city. Now it’s your turn: do your recycling!” Over the coming months, that call to action will accompany Alessandria residents across the city’s streets and social media channels, with the aim of improving how waste is sorted and strengthening a shared sense of responsibility for the city’s upkeep.
A campaign built on positive example
The initiative was designed to encourage a tangible improvement in everyday waste-sorting habits. Its driving force is the power of positive example, which is also where the headline “Why Not Us?” comes from: it draws on comparisons with the results achieved by smaller towns in the province, while also putting a challenge, and a call to action, to the city’s residents.
The campaign’s ambassadors are not celebrities or institutional spokespeople, but the people of Alessandria themselves: familiar faces from neighbourhoods and everyday settings who have chosen to lend their image to a shared cause. It is a choice that makes the communication feel closer, more credible and more community-driven. When sustainability stops sounding like a top-down message, it becomes much easier to turn it into a shared practice. It is an approach that places community back at the centre, framing individual responsibility through proximity and everyday lived experience.
From billboards to social media: a multi-channel plan
The campaign adopts a tone of voice that is positive, direct and lightly ironic, allowing it to reach different audiences without slipping into rhetoric. The communication plan includes:
- public billboards in 6×3 and 70×100 formats;
- posters and postcards;
- a strong digital presence across posts, stories and reels.
Alongside these tools, the project also includes a direct engagement component: meetings with residents designed to explain clearly how to dispose of waste correctly in the appropriate bins.
Practical information, instantly accessible
All campaign materials link to a QR code and to the dedicated website perchenoino.consorziorsu.al.it, where residents can find practical guidance to help them avoid mistakes in their everyday waste sorting.
This is an important point, because a good public campaign should not simply ask people to behave correctly: it should also give them the tools to do so. In that sense, communication and service go hand in hand.
Working together for a cleaner city
“Sustainable waste management cannot exist without strong synergy between institutions, companies and, above all, citizens,” says Mauro Bressan, President of the Alessandria District Waste Consortium. “Building networks across the local area is the real key to turning a challenging goal into a concrete opportunity for improvement for everyone. Only by working as a real team can we build a more aware, cleaner and more virtuous Alessandria, showing that sustainability is a shared goal.”
A similar point is made by Sergio Vazzoler, co-founder of Amapola: “We know that a real leap forward in waste collection can only happen through the joint commitment of all the players involved. This campaign is meant to show how each of us, with a small effort, can contribute to a shared cause. And, smiling like our campaign faces, we can ask ourselves: why not us?”
When sustainability has a human face
Rather than relying on an impersonal register, the campaign chooses to align its message with the very community it hopes to activate. Because when it comes to waste sorting, as with so many environmental issues, the real step change happens when communication does more than inform: it builds recognition, participation and a sense of belonging. It is an approach that also reflects the idea of a less standardised form of communication, one that is more firmly rooted in places and in people.
