Helen White, Associate Director of Waste and Resource Management at Tetra Tech, explains why, if we want people to waste less food or recycle more, we need to stop relying on awareness and start designing systems that make the right choice the easy choice.
If you work in the resources and waste sector, you’ll know that changing people’s behaviour is rarely straightforward. Whether we are talking about citizens, customers, or colleagues, the challenge is the same: how do we shift everyday habits in a way that is practical, affordable, and long-lasting?
I have spent a lot of time during the last 20 years encouraging people to waste less food. And whilst household food waste in 2021/22 was 22% lower than in 2007, WRAP found that between 2018 and 2021/22, it was 4.3kg per person higher, a 6.5% increase. Recycling rates in England have flat-lined too, hovering around 44% to 45% for years.
Policies such as Simpler Recycling, alongside Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging and the Deposit Return Scheme, are now tasked with driving us towards recycling 65% of municipal waste by 2035; but with our tendency to ‘campaign and explain’, are we still at risk of relying too heavily on communication to influence sustainable behaviours at scale?
Why communication by itself is not enough
It is a real issue for our sector. ‘Behaviour change’ is often used as shorthand for communication, but information, by itself, is rarely enough. Most people already know they should waste less food and recycle more. The problem is not always knowledge. More often, it is convenience, cost, habit, confusion, and a lack of motivation.
Providing information still matters, of course. But if we keep asking people to act differently without changing the conditions around them, we should not be surprised when progress is slow. The good news is that there are other ways to influence behaviour.
That is why the Behaviour Change Hierarchy is so useful. It helps us to think more clearly about the kind of intervention we are actually using.
At the top sits REMOVE: taking away the opportunity to do the wrong thing altogether. Below that are approaches such as NEUTRALITY, where the preferred behaviour does not cost more than the alternative, and EASE, where the desired behaviour is simpler to do than the wrong one. At the bottom is ASK, the approach we still use far too often because it is familiar, relatively cheap, and politically comfortable.
But if we’re being honest, asking people nicely has not delivered the results we need.
The strongest interventions are often the least glamorous. Sometimes the answer is not another leaflet, poster, or campaign. Sometimes it is better design. If the wrong behaviour is easier, cheaper, or more convenient, that is the behaviour people will likely choose. If we want different outcomes, we need to make the right action the default.
I experienced this at a conference where, despite recycling bins and clear signage, nobody seemed to know which container the compostable coffee cups should go in. In practice, the system had created confusion rather than clarity, and the result was contamination everywhere.
That problem could have been avoided entirely by using proper cups in the first place. In other words, the solution was not better sorting – it was removing the need to sort at all…
Education alone will not solve these problems, and neither will endless public campaigning. We do not have unlimited time, and we certainly do not have unlimited budgets! We need interventions that do more than ask people to change. We need interventions that make change happen.
Regulation absolutely has a role, but it needs to be designed with acceptability, practicality, and enforceability in mind. Likewise, with financial mechanisms that reprimand or reward, are you charging or incentivising those whose behaviour you want to change or placing the cost somewhere else in the system?
Behaviour is personal, complex, and deeply rooted in context. Whenever the desired action feels harder, more expensive, or less convenient, it will struggle to compete with the status quo.
If we are serious about reducing food waste and improving recycling, we need to be more ambitious about the way we design interventions. That means thinking beyond information and asking ourselves a more important question: what would it take for the right choice to be the obvious choice?
Sometimes that will mean removal. Sometimes neutrality. Sometimes ease. But it will always mean being honest that ‘asking’ by itself is not enough.
Our sector has spent years talking about behaviour change. Now we need to deliver.
Why should we take away the drum?
Why have I called this article Taking Away the Drum? This is how REMOVE is illustrated in the Behaviour Change Hierarchy – with thanks to lead author Stephen Bates.
“If a toddler is banging away on a toy drum, a parent might ask them to stop. When requests, demands, and threats still yield no response, the ultimate sanction is to take the drum away. The opportunity to behave contrary to the requirement has been removed,” he explains.
If you work in the Resources & Waste Sector, the chances are your role will involve trying to change how people behave.
In 2025, CIWM introduced a new training course to support its members tasked with encouraging pro-environmental behaviours and the delivery of a more resource-efficient society in line with CIWM’s strategic purpose.
Behaviour Change for the Resources and Waste Sector explores why behaviour can be difficult to influence, how to identify what might be needed to shift it, and introduces the strategies and tools that can be used – often in combination – to influence change.
Developed and tutored by myself, the overall aim is to give those working in the world of waste a better understanding of our behaviour and improve the efficacy of efforts to drive change and support the circular economy.
