At BRITA, we recently commissioned a new behaviour change pilot study with our charity partner Keep Britain Tidy that showed making waste reduction the social norm can lower household general waste by up to 27%, and simply worded reminders about the cost of dealing with the rubbish we generate can cut it by 13%.
To support the results, we also ran a survey with YouGov that found that Christmas is one of the most wasteful times of the year with almost three quarters (72%) of UK adults concerned by the amount of waste generated over the Christmas period, but only 9% using recyclable wrapping paper and cards every year, and less than a third (26%) planning meals over the Christmas period and only buying the food they need.
More than 6,000 of Britian’s most wasteful households in two local authority areas, Oxford and Cheltenham, were involved in the pilot, which explored how different interventions or messages framed in certain ways can change behaviour around the containers, bottles and packaging people throw away. It was designed to help people better understand and implement the ‘reduce’ premise of the waste hierarchy and, ultimately, reduce the pressure on the natural environment created by vast quantities of rubbish.
Following a series of focus groups to understand what might work best, households were contacted with letters from their council including five rules-of-thumb for reducing waste at home, from choosing no (or less) packaging alternatives and ditching the disposables, to looking out for refill options, getting organised and simply saying no to things that aren’t needed. Three different key messages were tested: an environmental message, linking individual consumption to wider environmental concern; the cost of waste disposal, linking this to other services that residents care about and framing waste prevention as a social norm, increasing the perceived capability to reduce waste.
