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It would be tough, they were told - an "eco-challenge" in a secret location. They would need to pack their passports and update their jabs. Sasha Gardner, a glamour model, was expecting to visit a rainforest or Pacific island. "But when we turned up, we weren't at an airport," she says, "we were in a rubbish dump in Croydon."
Ms Gardner and 10 other contestants are set to be the latest stars of reality TV in Dumped, a new series to be screened on Britain's Channel 4 early next month. Their challenge will be to live, eat and sleep for three weeks on a south London landfill, completing a series of tasks designed to highlight the true scale of what we throw away.
Rob Holdway, director of Brighton-based environmental consultancy Giraffe Innovation, who presents Dumped and set the challenges, says it was telling that most participants in the show, which was filmed last June, had packed for a long-haul flight.
"A lot of people think they have to go to the Arctic or the Amazon to highlight climate change," he says. "But the reality is our desire for all the stuff we use is increasing carbon emissions. The ecology starts in our kitchens and rubbish bins."
Ms Gardner says, "I honestly thought I was going to leave. I'd never even been camping before and I thought there was no way I could live on a dump for three weeks. It was awful."
It should be noted that dump in question was not all it seemed.
Health and safety laws prevented participants living among the used nappies and syringes that litter real landfills. Instead, producers worked with the Environment Agency and the Croydon dump's operators to collect 1000 tonnes of real people's rubbish, screened for hazardous waste, piling it up within sniffing distance of the real landfill.
Their aim was to replicate the rubbish that makes its way to the landfill sites that dot the outskirts of Britain's towns and cities - some 434 million tonnes of rubbish, of which just 27 per cent is recycled.
The Dumped producers selected a mixed bunch of environmentalists, energy guzzlers and the indifferent. For most, the sight of tons of other people's rubbish was shocking.
On returning home after the series, they were changed people. For Ms Gardner, "everything" changed. "I look at the environment completely differently," she says. "I separate my glass, plastic and paper and take old clothes to charity shops. I have fewer baths and don't fly as much.
"And when I do temp jobs in offices, if they don't leave their computers on standby or don't recycle their paper, I say something. They probably think I'm really weird, but it makes me feel really good."
