Boosting food waste recycling

Recycling rates in England appear to be plateauing below the EU target level of 50% for 2020, and well below the 65% target for 2035. Waste and recycling are also surprisingly controversial topics.

Most people begin recycling because of some outside prompt (changes to collections or moving house for example).

BIT worked with Wigan Council to test whether tagging bins with colourful flyers, carrying different recycling-related messages, could increase food waste recycling.

Bin tagging did not have a statistically significant impact on the amount of food waste recycled, but did increase food caddy orders – for which the social norms message increased order rates by more than 60%.