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?
• 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
– 2.3 Behavioral attitudes
3. Conclusions
Join the Global View of SWM
http://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
structural problem to our personality
that renders a more general recycling
behavior?
 Evolutionary psychology

• Natural selection is the PERSONALITY

origin of many decision-
• Human typical
making rules that define
psychological
human behavior
mechanism
• DNA impact of survival
• Our behavior
adventure
depends both in
• Thoughts, feeling, situation /
behavioral patterns conditions and this
reproduced successfully for mechanism too
millions of generations
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
coalitions
• 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
generations
• 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
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 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 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?
What is the effects of our neighbors
and neighborhood?
Let’s frame it

Social –
Situational
environmental
conditions
values

Behavior
attitudes

Framework to
understand recycling
behavior of individuals
2.1 Situational conditions
Q4: Who recycles more?

• Full recyclers are mainly retired and

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
Small linear streets are
• The action of the better than big ones
neighbor plays a role
• Again proximity and
• In big squares there are
visibility create
no special differences
interaction
with linear streets
• 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
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
2.2 Social-environmental values

• Recycling performance match with

purchasing habits
• Recyclers buy things:
– 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
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 Why cans are not
paper so much? recycled so much?
• Long history • Cans are being waste
• No preparation during busy periods like
• Easy storage cooking
• Global icon – • Need for rinsing
deforestation • 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
• 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
• 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
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