How to drive up recycling rates: behaviour change tips for comms pros

To mark Recycle Week 2024, in October, I wanted to share some tips on how to drive up recycling rates. This year’s theme, ‘Rescue Me’, calls for rescuing recyclable items from heading to the rubbish bin. It’s a really good focus and a great opportunity to think about applying behaviour change thinking to recycling campaigns.

Here’s why focusing on one behaviour — like rescuing a single extra item — works, and how you can harness this to make your campaigns more effective.

Why Narrowing Focus Boosts Impact Psychologists best guess is that we make around 35,000 decisions a day, and when overwhelmed with choices, we can often revert to what’s easiest or most familiar.

This means that if we focus on just one or two behaviours, like asking someone to rescue just one extra recyclable item from the bin the task is more achievable. It's more likely to stick, and easier to measure.

We saw this principle applied effectively in WRAP’s 2023 Food Waste Action Week, which concentrated on one behaviour: buying loose fruit and veg over packaged ones. By narrowing the focus, the campaign created a clear, actionable step that people could take on a regular basis. The same strategy applies to recycling.

Encouraging people to make a small, manageable change — like rescuing one item — can create a ripple effect that leads to larger shifts in behaviour over time.

Five questions to guide your recycling campaign

When developing a recycling communications strategy, it’s important to ask the right questions. Don't skip this bit and go straight to the tactics.

These five can help you create a campaign that is insight-driven and focused on behaviour change:

1. What do we want people to do with their rubbish, recycling and food waste?

Are we aiming to reduce waste, increase recycling rates, or focus on particular types of recyclables?

2. What are people doing now?

Do they recycle certain items but not others? Do residents of flats recycle differently than those in houses? What patterns and themes do we see? What else is happening, like fly-tipping?

3. What are the barriers to recycling?

Is there confusion about what can and cannot be recycled? Is lack of bin space a common issue? What are gaps in knowledge and what are the environmental barriers?

4. Who do we need to reach?

Should we segment communications by housing type or life stage? For example, do people moving into new properties recycle differently than established residents?

5. What is the specific behaviour we want to change?

Should we focus on reducing contamination, rescuing particular items from the bin, or addressing the perception that all recycling goes to landfill?

Answering these questions can help you create more targeted, effective campaigns, and ensure your interventions are aligned with the behaviours you want to shift.

Attitudes and intentions matter Understanding attitudes is also key, particularly when it comes to recycling.

Do people believe that most of their neighbours recycle, encouraging them to do the same? Or do they think that recycling doesn’t matter because it all ends up in landfill and don't trust their local authority? Behaviour is driven by beliefs, but changing awareness is often the first step in changing behaviour, as this it is easier to shift and a quick win than more ingrained and difficult to move behaviours.

Focus on one behaviour for lasting change

To sum up, the theme of Recycle Week 2024, ‘Rescue Me’, offers a great opportunity for communications professionals to apply behaviour change thinking.

By focusing on a single problem —rescuing one extra recyclable item from the bin — you can simplify decision-making and increase the likelihood of lasting change.

Remember, insight is the foundation of any successful behaviour change campaign. Start by understanding what people are doing and why, and design your interventions to match. Book a Free ‘Supercharge Your Campaigns’ Call

Discover how to drive positive behaviour change, book your free ‘Supercharge Your Campaigns’ call today with Dominic and learn to deliver measurable impact, and save money on traditional communications methods.