Making Reuse Inevitable Through Behavior Science
By Jennifer Carrigan and Kelley Dennings
Originally published on SMANA's Social Marketing Insights blog
The path to a circular economy requires more than good intentions and consumer awareness.
People have understood humanity’s environmental impact for a very long time. The challenge we face today is not a lack of knowledge, it’s implementation.
To achieve the systemic change necessary for a reuse economy, we must shift our focus from individual consumer behavior to organizational and policy-level interventions that make sustainable choices the default, not the exception.
Jennifer Carrigan, Upstream’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, and Kelley Dennings, Senior Campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, dug into the role behavior science has in making reuse inevitable.
The original conversation was part of a SMANA webinar and is summarized below, edited for length and clarity.
Kelley: Jennifer, a few things drew me to your work. You have a background in public health and now focus on the environment. I’m a huge proponent of working intersectionally and getting out of our silos. I was also drawn to your interest in working beyond individual behavior change and making sure systems are built with equity in mind. All of that said, can you start by telling us why reuse matters.
Jennifer: The statistics surrounding single-use packaging are pretty staggering. Nearly 1 trillion disposable food service products are used annually in the United States alone. This throw-away economy consumes 10% of all wood harvested, 20% of all aluminum mined, 40% of all plastic created, and 50% of all glass produced worldwide.
Most institutional and fast casual dining, along with virtually all takeout and delivery, relies on disposables: containers, bags, boxes, condiment packets, plastic utensils, cups, lids, and napkins.
While recycling and composting have their place, they’re just not sufficient solutions. Most compostable packaging ends up in landfills where it produces methane gas, and much of it contains PFAS. Recyclable packaging faces similar challenges, with most ending up in landfills due to varying markets for recyclable material, and plastics being downcycled with each iteration.
The only truly sustainable alternative is reuse: designing products from the beginning for maximum quality, durability, and longevity, then integrating them into systems where they can be used over and over in their original form.
The climate imperative is clear. While 55% of UN climate goals can be achieved with renewable energy, 45% of the world’s greenhouse gas emission targets depend on how we make and use products.
Kelley: I love that you use the social ecological model in your work, it’s a great way to introduce systems thinking. One example I’ve always given is the behavior of riding a bike to work. I may be motivated, I may have knowledge, I might have a bike helmet, I might have even taken a class on how to bike in the rain, but if the built environment infrastructure — the roads around me — are not conducive to bike riding, I probably won’t do that as a way to get to work. We need to be working to change this infrastructure through policy and policymakers.
Jennifer: I agree! The Socio-Ecological Model (SEM) really does provide a great lens for understanding how to create lasting behavior change. The model identifies four levels of influence: individual:personal knowledge, attitudes, beliefs; interpersonal: social networks, peer influence; organizational/community: institutional rules, systems; and policy/societal: laws, regulations, cultural norms.
It’s harder to change the behavior of any specific person, but it’s much more effective at population-level change.
The tobacco cessation movement demonstrates this principle really well. Individual cessation programs had limited reach but were effective for specific patients. Peer campaigns couldn’t achieve scale. Smoking bans in public spaces created more impact. Clean Indoor Air Acts made the behavior extremely inconvenient.
Widespread cultural change, such as less smoking in movies and celebrities no longer promoting it, fundamentally shifted social norms. These interventions reinforced each other, with policy changes enabling culture change and vice versa.
Yet sustainability education has historically focused on the individual level. The burden is on consumers through campaigns about carbon footprints and recycling, rather than policy such as extended producer responsibility. In a reuse context, this would be like asking consumers if they want a reusable cup rather than providing it as a default, placing the onus on individual choice rather than system design.
Kelley: Can you say a little about what this would look like, to focus on implementing reuse at the system level?
Jennifer: Sure. The fundamental principle of behavior change is pretty straightforward: if you want to change behavior, make the right behavior the easy behavior or the only behavior available. This centers on three key concepts: defaults, convenience, and choice architecture.
Defaults are the pre-selected options that occur when individuals don’t make an active choice. Currently, the default behavior is to use disposables because that’s what is most widely available. People exhibit strong default bias and status quo bias, preferring things to remain as they are or following the path of least resistance. The sustainability field has this tendency to expect heroic efforts from average consumers, which honestly is not a winning strategy.
Convenience plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of defaults. Sticking with a default option requires less cognitive effort and avoids the perceived hassle of exploring alternatives. If we want people to use reuse systems, we have to make them as convenient as or more convenient than disposables. This means focusing less on getting individual consumers to use reusables and more on changing the environment to make reusables more convenient.
Choice architecture refers to how we design environments where people make decisions. While incentives and fees are examples of choice architecture, the most effective approach is to make the right behavior the easy or default behavior. This is critical both for getting consumers to start using a reuse system and for system design itself, like the strategic placement of return stations.
Kelley: This makes reuse more accessible to everyone, and I could see building these systems with equity in mind, like allowing bring your own (BYO) and also allowing for third-party reusable wash hubs.
I like what you’ve said about collective action. We’ve found that successful movements have four things in common: they focus on core values, they tap into a frustration with the status quo, they reach people through many networks, and they have one powerful message that’s communicated well. How does this relate to reuse?
Jennifer: Adding up individual changes does not equal system change. Individual actions just don’t increase at a rate sufficient to address the problem in a timely fashion. However, individuals engaging in collective action can create systems change. The individual’s role is to drive cultural change, policy change, or organizational change. The best approach is to join or create a group and work together.
For those messaging about reuse or sustainable behaviors, focus on convenience rather than morality. Create social proof. Advocate for systems change, not just behavior change. Remember that messaging alone only captures the highly motivated minority.
My challenge to the reader would be to try applying one SEM principle to your current project this week. Consider what barriers you can remove to make the desirable behavior easier. Join a group effort if you haven’t already. The shift to a reuse economy won’t happen through individual heroics but through collective action that changes the systems we all operate in.
Kelley: Jennifer, thanks so much for your time and knowledge.
Kelley Dennings is a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, where she works to protect wildlife by addressing endless growth, inequitable consumption, and the underlying causes of the extinction crisis.
Learn more about the Center for Biological Diversity’s consumption work.
Jennifer Carrigan is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Upstream, where she applies her expertise in organizational change management and behavior change to lead efforts to accelerate the scale of reuse by implementing reuse systems in high impact sectors and creating tools that overcome barriers to reuse.
Learn more about Jennifer’s insights into behavior change and reuse systems.
