Recent workshops hosted by WasteMINZ and delivered by BehaviourWorks Australia prompted Joanna Langford, Senior Waste Minimisation Officer for Wellington City Council, to reflect on where her team has nailed it and failed it. Joanna explains more below.
Over the last few years, one of the Wellington City Council (WCC) waste minimisation team’s key focus areas has been on reducing staff waste at the main WCC office. This included waste audits, interviews and surveys. These led to initiatives like updated bin signage, support for surrounding cafes to onboard the AgainAgain coffee cup lending system, a library of reusable takeaway containers for staff and a multi-faceted comms and behaviour change approach with mini campaigns to support the uptake of the initiatives.
Here are a few of our insights from this work:- Prioritise behaviours at the top of the waste hierarchy
Behaviour change can be slow and resource intensive. It can require multiple approaches and a committed effort over time. One of the key lessons we learned was, whenever possible, prioritise the behaviours at the top of the waste hierarchy (reduce and reuse). Even if the wins are small, the effort is worthwhile as these behaviours are most likely to have the best impact in the longer term.
We carried out an initial waste audit to determine a baseline and identify key problem areas to address through this project. The audit highlighted disposable coffee cups and ‘compostable’ or dirty plastic takeaway containers as a common contaminant in the recycling bins. We invested effort and resources encouraging staff to recycle correctly with updated bin signage, in-person talks, visual audits, inter floor competitions, written posts and articles.
Snapshot of one day of waste destined for landfill due to products being placed in incorrect bins or in the rubbish bin.
However, our second audit showed very little change in the contamination. After evaluating the effort/impact of this work we changed our focus to be on encouraging staff to use the reusable containers for takeaways. Even though this behaviour requires more change than just deciding what bin to use, swapping out single use products for reusables has the environmental benefits of saving resources and waste. It also removes these common contaminants from the waste stream. - Keep your eye out for systems change and opportunities to design out undesirable behaviour
During the waste audit we found that 25% of waste in rubbish bins was paper towels. After undertaking research and staff interviews the results showed that capability was a barrier, there was confusion and a knowledge deficit around what bin to put the paper towels in. In response we rolled out various education-based interventions and spent considerable effort on this problem product, however the follow up audit showed no obvious change.
Leigh McKenzie, from Dunedin City Council shared a great example of how they designed out a similar waste problem in their office. After looking at reusable alternatives, the research found cotton fabric cabinet towels were an overall better option in terms of environmental impact, cost and hygiene (each roll of cotton fabric avoids 20,000 paper towels). This research led to a decision to swap to cotton fabric towels.
This change to the immediate environment or ‘environmental restructure’ meant the undesirable behaviour couldn’t happen anymore so avoided the need for ongoing behaviour change campaigns. - Define a very specific behaviour to help design the right intervention, measure success, and evaluate
One of the initiatives we introduced was a library of reusable containers (Reusabowls) that staff could borrow to get takeaways. We rolled out a series of mini-interventions to encourage uptake of the initiative, with a general goal to ‘encourage staff to use the provided reusable containers for takeaways’. The measures we used to gauge success included a tally done by the cleaners over the first month of the trial, a count of how many reusable bowls remained at the end of the one year trial (to understand loss rate), how many bowls were ‘in use’ (in the dishwasher) over three days and conducted informal interviews in the kitchens with staff to ask if they used the bowls, how often, and if there were any barriers to using them.
BehaviourWorks Australia use ATACT (Audience, Target, Action, Context, Time) as a tool to help identify ‘who does what to what, when and where’.
If we had used this tool our ‘goal’ would have looked more like this: ‘When Wellington City Council staff (Audience) leave their desk to get takeaways at lunch time or break time (time) they pick up (action) a reusable container (target) from the kitchen bench (context).’ Defining the problem and behaviour more explicitly at the beginning would have helped with designing more targeted interventions, measuring and evaluating the interventions. - Some research is better than no research
Like most organisations, we have limited time and money to put towards behaviour change projects and initiatives. Best practice, including understanding the specific problem, behaviour, barriers and audience at a local level can feel overwhelming and sometimes be unrealistic within budgets and timeframes.
However, evidence provides us with important data that can test our assumptions, guide us in the right direction and help avoid common mistakes. A classic mistake is assuming our audience care as much as we do about reducing waste. This can lead to us thinking we know what the problems and solutions are and thinking that we just need to roll out a knowledge and awareness campaign and that once people know why and how, surely they will do it!
One of our key takeaways is that even a small amount of research is better than no research. If it is a small project, we aim to apply a simple behaviour change method like COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation and Behaviour) to help explore the problem and barriers, spend time looking at existing research and talking to a few people in the audience to gather local insights. This approach will likely result in more substantive outcomes compared to relying on assumptions or guessing what might work.
Some good sources for desk-top research we use are:
● Research from the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) is a good source for information around the problem, barriers and behaviours
● MfE's Best Practice for Communications guide has simple tips and examples for designing behaviour change communications Best practice communications for waste minimisation | Ministry for the Environment
● Reuse Aotearoa has research specific to reuse
● Science Direct have a great selection of open-source behaviour research including systematic reviews.
● MfE's Best Practice for Communications guide has simple tips and examples for designing behaviour change communications Best practice communications for waste minimisation | Ministry for the Environment
● Reuse Aotearoa has research specific to reuse
● Science Direct have a great selection of open-source behaviour research including systematic reviews.
Tips from the pros
Dr Kavya Raj (Director of Education, BehaviourWorks Australia) co-delivered the recent BehaviourWorks Australia training for WasteMINZ.
I asked Kavya for her top tips for applying Behaviour Change best practice, especially for smaller scale projects when there are limited resources.
“When resources like time are restricted, a focus area that will always have good ‘bang for your buck’ is diving into the barriers your particular audience faces in performing your behaviour. The deeper your understanding of why people aren’t doing what you want them to do (rather than making assumptions), the better your ability to address those barriers in your intervention design and drive meaningful change.
Lastly, if you’re really limited on resources, the main focus should always be on making the behaviour as easy as possible to perform. Ask yourself, “what would make this behaviour as effortless as possible?”, and use the answers to help inform what your change programme should do. Even minor friction costs faced by your audience can reduce the impact of your work.”
About the author
Joanna Langford
Senior Waste Minimisation Officer, Wellington City Council
Joanna Langford came to work in waste through her art practice which explores the fragile relationship between the natural world and the human constructed environment. An interest in repurposing materials and products as resources for art led to a job working in resource recovery at the Tip Shop. Joanna is now the Senior Waste Minimisation Officer at Wellington City Council and a member of the WasteMINZ Behaviour Change Sector group.
