Plastic waste cripples environmental and human health. Yet its management is severely under-priced, deprioritised, and unregulated. The status quo on recycling comprises multiple elements including: limited environmental laws; weak enforcement; inadequate waste management systems; poor recycling infrastructure, compounded by an exploding population; amplified buying habits; and low environmental participation and awareness. The permanence of this plastic waste that our seas and soils are drowning in, is a problem that can no longer be ignored.
Research on understanding recycling practices and challenges has only recently started noticing the importance of context. The perception of recycling in developing economies of the Global South is growing at a much slower pace to the larger global trend towards sustainability. Rather than being perceived as a sustainable act for greater good, recycling is instead seen as an arduous, inconsequential, and unimportant task. Additionally, resources and infrastructure have been stretched to a point where recycling has become a personal and localised undertaking. Much of this thinking is a result of context, in which social norms, cognitive constructions, and cultural perceptions play a crucial role. Therefore, the plastic problem is not just an infrastructure, policy, or production problem; it is a much larger behavioural one.
TRANSFORM, a joint initiative between UK, Unilever, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)r, and EY partnered with Busara to encourage recycling behaviours within communities in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The project, titled ‘Playbook for Recycling Behaviour Change’, aims to do this by studying the impact of recycling economies on different income households, mapping motivations and attitudes of stakeholders, co-designing and rigorously testing interventions, and then disseminating solutions supported by the local context. Doing so will address cognitive and infrastructural barriers which hinder recycling participation, and increase the effectiveness of recycling initiatives and policies.
Our first step was an inquiry into the current landscape of recycling behaviours, motivations, and attitudes in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with 10 experts (five men, five women) primarily from India and Kenya, and from other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Each expert was selected for their extensive experience with research and application of recycling strategies, and for the recycling and waste management organisations they work for. The experts also form part of the senior leadership and management teams in their respective organisations. The interviews covered four priority areas in recycling, namely: general levels of awareness; motivations and opportunities; barriers to recycling, refilling, and reusing; and best practices and concerns for the future. We used thematic analysis to distil the findings from our conversations.
What we learned
- Recycling is a growing culture, but there are large informational gaps to fill. Visible government actions, such as introduction of the Extended Producer Responsibility certificates in Africa, and single-use plastic bans in both India and Kenya, have contributed to increased focus, conversation, and action around recycling. However, an informational gap exists among consumers regarding what items can and cannot be recycled, where to dispose of items for recycling, and the process of disposal of waste up until it is recycled. There is also general scepticism regarding whether a waste item actually ends up being recycled, due to lack of transparency and trust in the process. The limited awareness is to the extent that distinct practices of refilling, and reusing are used interchangeably with the term ‘recycling’.
- Perception of the plastic problem is determined by context. The notions, practices, and challenges surrounding plastic recycling are often a result of the context one is in. In India, for example, reusing old containers for storage, or recycling plastic items into mats or ropes is a common household practice. On the other hand, in Kenya and other African countries, the installation and use of special waste bins in many communities, and refill services in grocery shops, is more common. In India, scrap collectors, waste pickers, recyclers and dealers are primarily from low-income households, majority of them being women. In Kenya, we noted that the youth have been more vocal and involved in changing the narrative around recycling.
- Recycling is susceptible to the class effect. This is a phenomenon when the rich produce and consume plastics, but the waste burden and consequences of it are borne by the lower class. We observe this with many large, low-income neighbourhoods being situated around landfills and waste disposal sites, for instance Ghazipur slums in New Delhi, India, Hazaribagh in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Dandora in Nairobi, Kenya. Moreover, it is primarily low-income workers who are involved in waste collection and recycling as a means of income generation. This contributes to the longstanding stereotype—and general perception of recycling practices— that waste management is a low-income, dirty job, only done by women, and adds to a general negative perception surrounding recycling practices.
- The plastic problem is not only structural, but behavioural in nature. There are several infrastructural and design challenges for recycling, for example: the general lack of transparency in the recycling process; a lack of water refilling sites, waste disposal stations and bins; and poor design of containers for refill or reuse in both India and Kenya, among others. However, a large proportion of challenges are behavioural in nature; scepticism, non-participation, lack of information, high cognitive effort involved, and choice overload (which items to recycle and where to recycle) lead to inaction and abstinence from existing recycling practices and initiatives.
Barriers tend to differ across recycling, reusing, and refilling behaviours. There is a general lack of information about reusing, while the lack of refilling sites in Kenya and other African countries makes refilling an inconvenient process compared to just buying an already packed item. Finally, as a result of the general dismissal of the plastic problem, recycling is not considered to be as important as the issues of health and education, which are more vocalised in India.
What can motivate recycling
Awareness creation and education about recycling practices were identified as the primary tactics for encouraging recycling behaviour. Interventions towards this, such as creation of recycling infrastructure, require involvement of multiple stakeholders. Partnerships between governments and civil society organisations, for example, can pool resources for plastic disposal bins, and recycling centers in shared spaces such as parks. Incentives, monetary or otherwise, are also an effective way to influence behaviour change and sustainability. In South Delhi for example, The Garbage Cafe provides a meal in exchange for one kilogram of plastic waste.
It is safe to say that an overwhelming amount of plastic is demanded and produced every day. This has allowed consumers to avoid ownership of the problem, and distance themselves from actively participating in recycling behaviour change. The findings presented here suggest that the lack of information, transparency in the recycling process, scepticism about the plastic problem, and the future costs of recycling are issues that need to be brought to the forefront. This project addresses these gaps by exploring behavioural barriers such as social norms, habit formation, mental models, and goal setting around waste management practices and participation. We believe that by leveraging behavioural science, and the understanding of contexts, we can increase the effectiveness of, and participation in, recycling schemes and campaigns.
Going forward in the project, we aim to connect with other stakeholders—such as households, recycling organisations, waste pickers, and scrap dealers—to gain multidimensional perspectives on recycling behaviour challenges, and how to address them.
