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/

amavrop@epem.gr

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/

amavrop@epem.gr