Recycling

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What are top 3 motivations for consumers to recycle? What are the most effective ways for businesses and brands to motivate consumers to recycle their packaging

Recycling
Green Marketing
responsible consumerism
Jacquelyn Ottman
74 months ago

1 answer

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Ideally people shouldn't need any incentive, recycling should be like a reflex, a normal behavior, like saying "hello" or "thank you". This can be achieved through education (explaining why it's important, visiting recycling centers, etc.) and must be consistent everywhere in everyday life: at school, at home, etc. It becomes "normal", people do it naturally without thinking, and not doing it is shocking and is considered as a lack of good manners. It takes time but then it's anchored deep inside.

Now for the "adults" of today, who didn't grew up with recycling as an habit, the answer might depend on the culture. I guess money is an effective motivation factor, for ex. fines if throw garbage on the street, or don't sort properly at home, pay garbage fees according to the weight of non-sorted trash, introducing a deposit system (you don't get your money back if you don't bring your trash back), no more free plastic bags at cashier, etc. Money can also be used on a more positive manner, for example by rewarding the collection of specific waste type (for ex. in Japan school kids can gather aluminum cans, the school sells it to an alu recycling company and they can buy books for the school library with the money) or gain additional points on your fidelity card if you bring your own shopping bag.

In countries where the look of the other matters, you can put stickers on badly sorted garbage to publicly show someone misbehaved. (here again my example comes from Japan)

Another approach is to explain why recycling is important, and show the concrete impacts on the oceans, health, etc. People are more likely to react if it concerns them (or their children) directly and/or they can benefit from it. And also explain concretely what to do and how to do it. The easier, the better.

Now regarding the ways businesses/brands can influence the recycling of their consumers. It first depends on the available recycling methods for the consumers. It doesn't make sense to encourage consumers to sort their packaging according to material types, if the municipality only collects one big box and brings everything directly to landfill.

In case selected collection is implemented, then one practical thing would be to have packaging parts easy to disassemble and identify (material type) to make it easy for the consumers to know in which trash box they should throw it (e.g. a bottle of perfume made of glass, with sprayer made of plastic and containing some elements in metal that you cannot disassemble is super annoying). Producers can also put explanations on how to sort their packaging (cf. French legislation).

If the topic really matters to the company, and it wants to show its involvement, then it can sponsor events or NPOs' missions to attract public awareness on the waste issue in general, and explain why recycling is important and what to do.

They can also organize the collection of their own packaging, for ex. as an event with reward, explaining how they will recycle them and the benefit.

Christine Yolin
74 months ago

Have some input?