recycling campaigns: factors affecting success and failures
DESCRIPTION
This is a presentation dedicated to outline how human evolution has created barriers to recycling behavior and what tools are available to overlap them. The importance of messages that affect human temporal and spatial scale is highlighted.TRANSCRIPT
Recycling campaigns
Factors affecting the
success and failures of them
Antonis Mavropoulos ISWA STC Chair CEO EPEM SA
Questions to discuss
• How can we change human behavior in order to
maximize recycling?
• Why informal recycling seems to be more effective?
• What are the relations between recycling
performance, life style and living conditions?performance, life style and living conditions?
• How those relations may be utilized to recycling
campaigns?
• Assumption: logistics and systems are fine (although they are not…)
Contents
1. Human evolution and recycling barriers
2. Recycling and daily practices
– 2.1 Situational conditions
– 2.2 Social – environmental values– 2.2 Social – environmental values
– 2.3 Behavioral attitudes
3. Conclusions
Join the Global View of SWMhttp://mavropoulos.blogspot.com/
Q1: What is the effectiveness of
recycling campaigns?
1. High
2. Medium
3. Poor
4. We do not know exactly
1. Human evolution and
recycling barriers
• Too much money, effort and time for recycling
campaigns - Results: not durable, not long-term,
not general recycling behavior
• Is there any kind of barrier to our brain for long-term results? Is there any for long-term results? Is there any structural problem to our personality that renders a more general recycling behavior?
Evolutionary psychology
• Natural selection is the
origin of many decision-
making rules that define
human behavior
PERSONALITY
• Human typical
psychological
mechanism • DNA impact of survival
adventure
• Thoughts, feeling,
behavioral patterns
reproduced successfully for
millions of generations
mechanism
• Our behavior
depends both in
situation /
conditions and this
mechanism too
Present Focus Brain
• Our ancestors: life or death every moment (nutrition,
shelter - safety, heat)
• Those who failed to behave like that simply did not
reproduce themselves
• How Long was Long-term: reproduction, influence
coalitionscoalitions
• We just started thinking long-term issues like
environment and climate change
The results are…
• Why we do not recycle since we
know the risk for our planet?
• Because the effects of non-recycling are
out of our temporal and spatial scale. In
temporal terms, those effects extend at
hundreds of years and affect future
generationsgenerations
• In spatial terms, the results of non-
recycling are obvious to resources
utilization rates and the landfills’ capacity
which are both many miles away
• Because our brain is present-centered
designed
• Imagine: everyone has his own landfill in his
backyard.
• How easily would you produce waste?
• How fanatic would you be to reuse and • How fanatic would you be to reuse and
recycle materials?
• Remember: reuse and repair patterns of our
grandpas and grandmas before single – use
products and SWM systems create the
easiness to throw away
The Present Focus Brain comes
for NIMBY as well!
So what to do?
• Information campaigns are not enough to
create changes in human behavior
• Create reasoning for recycling in our temporal
and spatial scaleand spatial scale
• Replace thousands of generations with millions
of social interactions: create social pressure for
long-term thinking to fight evolutionary inertia
• We have to reconsider how we promote recycling thinking out of the box to have sustainable results
Q2: How many of you are in
favor of recycling?
Q3: How many of you are active
recyclers on a daily basis?
2. Recycling and daily practice
• 100% favor recycling – max 50% do recycle.
Why?
• Fundamental misunderstanding: Behavioral
Change does not count just to rationalizationChange does not count just to rationalization
• If it was we should not have so many heart attacks since we know the causes!!!
• Knowledge is necessary but not capable to produce changes to behavior
How environmental action is framed in terms of daily practice and groups? Are there conditions that favor an environmental lifestyle?environmental lifestyle?What is the effects of our neighbors and neighborhood?
Let’s frame it
Social –environmental
values
Situational conditions
Framework to understand recycling
behavior of individuals
Behavior attitudes
2.1 Situational conditions
• Full recyclers are mainly retired and
relatively richer on average
Q4: Who recycles more?
relatively richer on average
• Non recyclers are mainly “young without
children – families with children – middle
aged without children”
• Property plays a role as well and type of
flat (with or without terrace, space limit)
The importance of architecture
Where do we have
more recycling rates
and participation?
Square type
Linear streets
Recycling & participation is more
at square type of 5-14 houses
Why?
• Visibility and proximity
create social interaction
• The action of the
neighbor plays a role
Small linear streets are better than big ones
neighbor plays a role
• In big squares there are
no special differences
with linear streets
better than big ones
• Again proximity and
visibility create
interaction
• Kind of human scale
• Crossroads
Recycling seems to be done in
clusters of households
• Up to 15 contiguous households create a
cluster of uniform behavior regarding
recycling – in this case there must be one to recycling – in this case there must be one to
start the change
• Squares create more easily clusters – use
them as a starting point for initiatives that will
provide visible action (the importance of collection scheme!)
Social Impact of Recyclers =
= Actions x Visibility x Proximity = Actions x Visibility x Proximity
2.2 Social-environmental values
• Recycling performance match with
purchasing habits
• Recyclers buy things:– Made from recycled in stead of virgin materials– Made from recycled in stead of virgin materials
– More durable
– With less packaging
• Recyclers tend to repair if it is possible
• The more personal recycling the more
change in consumption patterns and vice-
versa
Profile of full and non-recyclers
• Holistic approach for environment – not
sectored
• Committed recyclers believe in Biosphere
instead of Unlimited Growth, in Spaceship
Earth instead of anthropocentrism – they Earth instead of anthropocentrism – they
create lifestyle patterns
• Non-recyclers believe that there are no limits
to growth and that technology will solve all
environmental problems – they create
lifestyle patterns
What do they mostly recycle?
• Global trend 1: every person who recycle
start from paper and cardboard and recycles
much more of those materials comparing to
others
• Global trend 2: cans and glass recycling is
usually more difficult and less intent
comparing with paper and plastics
Why do they recycle paper so much?
• Long history
• No preparation
• Easy storage
Why cans are not recycled so much?
• Cans are being waste
during busy periods like
cooking• Easy storage
• Global icon –deforestation
• Need for rinsing
• Need for storage
• Not directly linked with “benefits”
2.3 Behavioral attitudes
• The more they are � Recycling is more possible
• Social norms - respect
• Self - Motivation
• Response efficacy• Response efficacy
• Self- efficacy
• Threat feeling
• Personal satisfaction
• Altruism
• Citizenship
3. Conclusions
• Although production and consumption
patterns are the key – elements that have to
be radically changed, recycling has a very
important role in order to relief the global
waste problem
• In terms of personal behavior, the human
personality has a built –in barrier for recycling
due to species characteristic understanding
of temporal scale. Our brain is too much present – focus in order to understand and
act according long-term impacts.
• Recycling campaigns usually fail because :
– They tend to ignore that messages should be
directed to affect people in their human spatial
and temporal scale
– They tend to ignore that information and
rationalization are not enough to change human
behavior behavior
• Recycling behavior is framed by situational
conditions, social- environmental values and
personal attitudes.
• The later determines the intention to recycle
while the first the possibility to actually
contribute
• Recycling activities should be carefully
designed according local conditions and
situation, taking into account social-
demographic characteristics,
architecture, finding the starting point and
creating clusters
• For all those reasons there is not a global • For all those reasons there is not a global
solution for successful recycling
• Instead there is an ocean of bad or
inappropriate solutions with some islands
of successful ones
LET’S FIND THEM WITH ISWA (WWW.ISWA.ORG )
I will be happy to share ideas…
http://mavropoulos.blogspot.com/