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Somerville, which recently introduced single-stream recycling, promoted the effort with a photo contest and satirical music video.
The photo contest was the idea of Denise Taylor, who, among other duties, coordinates the city’s use of social media. According to Jackie Rossetti, Somerville’s deputy communications director, Taylor noticed that once the large, lid-and-wheels-equipped tote bins replaced their smaller rectangular predecessors, many residents began posting photos of the bins on Twitter.
“We thought it would be fun to turn it into a contest,” Rossetti said. “The mayor [Joseph Curtatone] loves that sort of thing.”
The contest invited residents to submit “their best, their silliest, and their most inspiring” images of the new bins. Thirty-seven entries were received.
The winners, announced in February, included an image of six kids crossing a crosswalk in single file, a spoof on the cover of the Beatles’ album “Abbey Road.” Among the children is a boy standing up in a tote bin, with only his head and shoulders visible.
Another photo shows a child in a kayak fishing on the Mystic River. Also in the kayak is a tote bin, a duct-taped fishing pole protruding from its open lid.
City Hall also recruited a local comedian, Jimmy Del Ponte, to record a song for the contest. “I Love My Tote,” based on the theme of the 1970s TV series “The Love Boat,” features Del Ponte on a city street backed by six dancers, all of whom are wearing yellow sanitation gloves. The video can be viewed on the city’s website (www.somervillema.gov).
In December, Somerville collected 551 tons of recycling, an increase of 46 percent over the average monthly total in the year before the tote bins were introduced, Rossetti said.