Source: FederalNewsradio.com, published on 19th August 2013 by Amira Choueiki (Deloitte)
We all know ‘being green' can be a challenge. Whether it's remembering to take your reusable grocery bags to the store, waiting to pass by a recycle bin to toss your soda can, or riding the metro instead of hailing that cab, environmental friendliness often requires extra effort. However, we also know that collectively, these small choices can have a huge impact. Finding ways to encourage green behavior often demonstrates one of the areas that can be most difficult as it requires citizens to go against several of the ‘defaults' of human behavior - but effective tools exist. Here are a few examples.
Prime waste management with visual cues. In results published by the Danish Nudge Network (DNN) in March 2013, a reduction in food waste was directly related to plate size provided to conference attendees. At the Danish Executive Summit, two buffet lines offered two separate plate sizes - in the control group, the normal 27 cm diameter plate was offered, while in the treatment buffet line, a 24 cm diameter plate was set. All remaining food waste was collected following the luncheon and weighed, with outstanding results. The group using the smaller, 24 cm plate produced 26% less food waste than the group with the larger 27 cm plate - confirming the hypothesis that a subtle change in environment - in this case, a plate size - could influence sustainable food portioning.
Prior to this experiment, in 2011 DNN used visual cues to prime people's tendency to dispose of their garbage responsibly. In round one, researchers passed out caramel candies to passing pedestrians. Soon after, they carefully counted wrappers found in trash cans, ashtrays, bike baskets, and surrounding streets. In round two, they handed out the same candies but placed green footprints on the ground leading to nearby trash cans. Astonishingly, this resulted in 46% fewer wrappers found in inappropriate places. This concept is being applied in all sorts of ways - Wattson (which shows your household energy use and associated cost at a given time) and eFergy Showertime (which shows your length of shower and amount of water used in comparison to a set target) serve as reminders of energy and water use - visually priming in a simple, straightforward way. As the design of new smart meters and grids are developed, there is potential to consider these visual cue aspects to encourage responsible household resource use.
Make it a game. Organizations like Recyclebank have taken a carrot rather than stick approach to behavior change. They partner with companies to creatively incentivize recycling programs. Participants can ‘cash in' recycled goods for points, earning them discounts and credit at popular stores such as Target and Barnes and Noble Booksellers. Recyclebank proved that it is possible to increase participants' active involvement in environmentally friendly activities that ranged from switching to energy-saving light bulbs to buying more local produce. The Fun Theory incentivizes the development of games to encourage better behavior with a competition. Several of these efforts have focused on re-designing recycling receptacles as various arcade games, significantly increasing their use.
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