Don’t hate the player, change the container

Every day when you go into your workplace, there are a number of choices that effect the likelihood of you ending up with a takeaway food container: Did you bring leftovers? Did you accidentally-on-purpose forget to pack them so you could get something delicious for lunch instead? I see you; I am you. Lunch is often the highlight of our day. But takeaway has hidden costs for business.

Staff make the largest contribution to office waste, producing on average 118kg of waste per person, per year, with single use items like takeaway food and beverage containers making up a large proportion of this figure. Considering takeaway containers make up 22.7% of NSW litter, on top of those in our waste and recycling streams, the management of this waste source becomes an important environmental issue for business and government.

So, how can we change our behaviours around takeaway containers?

It may not come as a surprise but changing behaviour is hard. With estimates ranging from 21 to 66 days for the time it takes to break a habit, it’s easy to see why when it comes to making a change, we might sometimes feel like we’re fighting an unwinnable fight. We have so many things to remember every day that making space for another new item is not a priority is not for everyone. We feel disheartened when we fail to make a significant behavioural change, and we slip up, not remembering to bring a reusable bag to the shops, or caving and buying that packet of chips on our way home from work when we’re trying to eat better. And when we aren’t dealing with the waste stream personally its easy to forget that it’s there.

But what if we’re approaching it the wrong way?

One Danish company has condensed the factors that affect behavioural change into Nine Drivers of Behaviour Change, further grouped into three sub-sections: personal, social, and contextual. To explain these let’s look at the example of litter. To a large extent we rely on an individuals’ values of stewardship and knowledge around the effects of litter (personal factors) to discourage littering. We have shame campaigns like ‘Don’t be a tosser’ that are about creating social norms around not littering and shaming those who do (social factors). Then we have programs around placing more bins in the streets to reduce the chances of littering and enforcing fines for those caught littering (contextual factors). 

But how often do we ignore the power of the contextual and social factors when it comes to sustainability? The current norm around reducing single-use seems to be one of personal responsibility and while social factors are starting to creep in, like we can see with the growing norm around refusing plastic straws in our venues, contextual factors seem to have taken a back seat. What could this look like though if they were utilised? In the straws example we are seeing venues only give straws on request. So you have to actively opt in rather than out. What if our employers could make it easy for their people to do the right thing and at the same time improve their own waste streams?

When businesses and governments get on board with new game-changing initiatives that address the social, personal and contextual drivers, we start to see real shifts.

With control over both the financial resources and waste streams of an environment, businesses have the chance to implement campus or building-wide systems that can all but eliminate single use items. With a system that removes the need for individual behaviour change we can start to look at things on a larger scale. This can have substantial impact in comparison to individual efforts.

Instead of relying on single-use options, office and retail spaces can provide more sustainable ways for you to eat your lunch without the worry of how you’re going to be disposing of the container at the end or carrying it in if you’re already on board the sustainability train.

And you as an individual can leave the house in the morning and you only need to remember your phone. And maybe your keys.