• Creates strategy, implementation, and evaluation of the City’s Solid Waste education and outreach programs to maintain effective services and to achieve federal, state, and county-mandated waste reduction goals.
• Develops comprehensive public education strategies and tactics to promote solid waste services to local schools, civic organizations, businesses, mobile home parks, and homeowners’ associations.
• Encourages program participation via public speaking, digital and traditional media, and various outreach to communicate with the public.
• Serves as a marketing and communications technical adviser to division management, cooperatively planning outreach with the City’s resources to represent the division with governmental and private entities and other operating units of the City.
• Develops, creates, and maintains solid waste marketing material such as department webpages, recycling guides, reports, press releases, and announcements for citywide distribution, signs, flyers, labels, social and digital media, and educational promotional materials.
• Schedules flexibility to research and actively participate in regular community outreach events on weekends and evening hours, as needed, to promote all available solid waste services.
• Builds working relationships with divisional supervisors assigned to residential and commercial collection programs to promote, train, and bridge communications with  field staff and customers to properly use all solid waste services.
• Performs a variety of research methods to identify behavior change barriers and benefits resulting in new and existing customer compliance and retention.
• Designs and implements strategies to attract new commercial roll-off and front-loader accounts.
• Stays current with industry trends for assigned program(s), including technology development, regulatory activity, consumer trends, competitive trends, and best practices impacting the overall performance of assigned programs.
• Maintains educational and outreach program records such as reports, key performance initiatives, outreach impact, analysis, surveys, etc., to provide data for measuring program success.
• Researches and studies the feasibility of applying new techniques to existing programs to increase efficiency.
• Builds working relationships with material recovery facility contacts to maintain the highest quality recycling stream and oversees annual recycling audits as applicable.
• Provides regular insights on recycling quality to the Manager of Solid Waste.
• Prepares and manages solid waste-related grant applications as needed.
• Directs and executes special programs and projects as assigned by the Manager of Solid Waste.
• May be required to work alternate hours as necessary to attend local events and for the efficient operation of the department.

ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONS: 

• Performs related work as required.
• Position may be designated as Mission Critical.

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in Marketing, Communications, Business Administration, or related field.
• Two (2) years of experience in solid waste and recycling-related public education and marketing or related experience.

An equivalent combination of education, training, and experience, which provide the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, and other competencies necessary for success in the target position.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: 

• Managing Recycling Systems Certification is required within one year of hire.
• Must maintain a valid driver’s license.
• Must maintain a valid telephone number.
• Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) or Community-Based Social Marketing Certification is preferred.

• Considerable knowledge of solid waste and recycling principles, practices, and procedures.
• Experience in conducting market research, program development, and outreach to multi-lingual and multi-cultural communities desired.
• Ability to read and interpret ordinances, contracts, and legislation concerning solid waste collection operations.
• Ability to develop, implement, and monitor programs that meet or exceed federal, state, and county-mandated goals.
• Demonstrates the ability to prepare complex, clear, concise reports and presentation materials.
• Ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing with public officials, management, and the public.

WORKING ENVIRONMENT/PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Requires light to medium physical work that involves walking, standing, driving most of the time, and exerting between twenty (20) and fifty (50) pounds of force periodically.
• Considerable skill, adeptness, and speed in using the fingers, hands, or limbs in tasks involving close tolerances or limits of accuracy.
• When performing field work, the job risks routine exposure to significant environmental hazards; bright/dim light, dust, pollen, extreme heat/cold, wet/humid conditions, extreme noise levels, animals/wildlife, fumes and/or noxious odors, traffic, moving machinery, and possible exposure to disease/pathogens and toxic/caustic chemicals.
• The job requires normal visual acuity, field of vision, hearing, speaking, color perception, sense of smell, depth perception, and texture perception.

All City of Lakeland positions are subject to testing (e.g. written, oral, performance, computerized, interview, and/or any combination).  Candidates selected for testing will be notified via email or telephone.  Please check your e-mail and telephone messages regularly, including “junk” folders.  Test times and locations to be announced.