UK waste recycling charity, WRAP, has partnered with the non-profit social enterprise Behaviour Change, to promote consumer awareness of the environmental implications of the products they buy.
It is an issue that WRAP believes has received insufficient attention as worry about the climate emergency grows in the aftermath of COP26. WRAP’s priorities will be food waste, plastic pollution, clothing and textiles, and recycling.
The collaboration will include behavioral insights and methods, as well as prototyping, testing, scaling treatments and communicating with the public.
The project will engage the public directly through a suite of citizen-facing brands such as Love Food Hate Waste, Recycle Now, Love Your Clothes, and Clear on Plastics, and will support a variety of environmental commitments made by organizations and governments such as those under Courtauld 2030 and the UK Plastics Pact.
Marcus Gover, chief executive WRAP, said that with over half of all UK emissions related with the products they use, they must influence public behavior about how they shop, eat, dress, and dispose of things. If they don’t, they won’t be able to address climate change and will severely limit their ability to reduce emissions. Changing behavior on a large scale can have significant benefits, and Behaviour Change and WRAP will work together to create change through the businesses and governments we engage with – here and around the world – as well as through their work with the public.
David Hall, executive director of Behaviour Change, said that they’re focused on learning about what truly works to alter behavior for the better and then scaling it up. Working together with WRAP will allow them to accomplish this in larger, more effective ways that will begin to address the massive sustainability concerns that both organizations exist to address. This new alliance is all about making a difference, and they are excited about the new opportunities it will open up.
The agreement formalizes years of work done by WRAP and Behaviour Change on behaviour change interventions. Recent examples include trials with Boots and Unilever to increase bathroom bottle recycling, a pilot with Dorset Council that resulted in a 46% reduction in recycling contamination, and collaboration with Love Food Hate Waste to promote a better understanding of date labels.
Behaviour Change will operate as a subsidiary of WRAP, while continuing to work with its own customers to deliver social and environmental projects.