THE promise of pizza encouraged University of Brighton students to increase their recycling and to reduce waste by more than 25 per cent.

Becca Melhuish, the university’s environmental officer, ran a recycling competition in halls of residents and scored students on how well they recycled.

The best recyclers were awarded prizes, mainly pizzas.

Becca, who heads the university’s carbon reduction campaign, c-change, developed the competition as part of a work-based assignment while studying for her PG certificate in social marketing at the university.

She said: “Thanks to the practices learned on the course, the recycling initiative proved extremely effective.”

Becca spoke of her project at the recent UK Social Marketing Conference at Queen Mary University in London.

She was one of a number of former students from the University’s Brighton Business School’s social marketing unit to present at the conference which was chaired by Jeff French, a visiting professor at the University of Brighton.