How children’s drawings can reduce illegal waste dumping
What unsustainable behavior needs to change:
The annual waste report for the Dutch municipality of Dordrecht sheds light on a specific behavioural issue: the frequent illegal dumping of bulky waste near underground containers in the Prinsessenbuurt neighbourhood of Nieuw-Krispijn. This behaviour has had significant consequences for the neighbourhood’s liveability and the efficiency of the waste removal process.
The Green Nudge:
In collaboration with Rijkswaterstaat and the municipality of Dordrecht, Shift Gedrag developed an effective solution to reduce this undesirable behaviour and promote a more sustainable approach to waste management.
The strategy, which they’ve positioned as „The Green Nudge,“ included multiple interventions:
- Container Wraps with Children’s Drawings: A design competition for children from Prinses Julianaschool, using the winning drawings to decorate the underground containers. This resulted in increased ownership and reduced anonymity.
- Thank You Sign: Informational signs with the message, „Thank you for keeping the container areas clean!“ This sign served as a reminder of the respective behaviour desired and made people aware of their civic responsibility.
- Sidewalk Instructions: This strategy used text and images on the sidewalk near the containers, including contact information for scheduling pickup appointments – to ensure people had quick access to information about bulky waste.
- Flyers: Clean neighbourhood coaches distributed flyers to inform residents about the intervention and waste disposal options; including translations in various languages to enhance accessibility.
- WhatsApp Trial: As part of the pilot, residents could have bulky waste picked up by simply sending a WhatsApp message to HVC. This lowered the threshold for scheduling a pickup appointment.
The results:
- Bulky Waste: After the implementation of the intervention, incidents of illegal dumping of bulky waste near the underground containers decreased by a remarkable 85%. Conclusively representing a significant behavioural change.
- Residual Waste: Incidents of illegally dumped bags of residual waste also decreased by 54%, indicating a positive trend toward more sustainable waste management.
- Plastic Waste: While the results for illegally dumped bags of plastic waste were not yet significant, there was a promising decrease in the intervention area. No comparable improvement was observed at the control site.
Are you aware of any other nudges that that reduce littering? Feel free to get in touch: hello@green-nudges.com
From psychologist Roos Alink who is a director at Dutch Shift Gedrag. Shift Gedrag helps governmental organisations to make the Netherlands more sustainable and safe with behavioural insights.
Teaching recycling through gamification: The Waste Game
What unsustainable behavior needs to change:
Despite improved waste management infrastructure, waste is still poorly separated due to a lack of motivation and knowledge among students and staff. Common waste items such as disposable coffee cups, pizza boxes, and packets of crisps often land in the wrong bin, contaminating the bin entirely and thus sending it straight to the landfill.
There are various barriers to waste sorting and recycling amongst university students: the physical environment around them, which includes waste infrastructure and signage; and the psychological factors, such as limited waste sorting knowledge, low environmental concerns, lack of trust in the recycling system and low perceived collective effort. To tackle these barriers and complement the current efforts to raise awareness, a cost-effective and systematic education method was needed.
The Green Nudge:
Developed as part of the Campus Living Labs Sustainability Project “The Waste Game” game was designed by The Behaviouralist in collaboration with four Irish universities, and relevant stakeholders, including MyWaste.ie, An Taisce Green Campus and Regional Waste Authorities.
The Waste Game aims to transmit waste prevention and recycling knowledge. The game is designed as a quiz and structured around the waste hierarchy framework, focusing on waste prevention followed by recycling. It includes behavioural and gamification techniques to support learning and engagement. At the end of each level, players can choose to commit to a set of actions in real life before moving down the waste hierarchy and unlocking the following level. Players can earn points throughout the game and can compete against each other with a chance to win a reward based on their performance. The game was designed in collaboration with participating universities and tailored to their local context.
The result: The Waste Game was successful in increasing knowledge, motivation to sort waste and confidence in waste-sorting amongst participants. It has now been developed into an independent platform and will be part of the onboarding week for new students at universities in Ireland.
Click here to play The Waste Game.
Are you aware of any other nudges that use gamification to promote environmentally-friendly behaviour? Feel free to comment or get in touch: hello@green-nudges.com
The Waste Game was developed by behavioural scientists and designers at The Behaviouralist, as part of the Campus Living Labs Project. Campus Living Labs is a partnership project between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Irish Universities Association (IUA) aimed at encouraging pro-environmental behaviours among students in Ireland.