Fascinating – How To Change Behaviour To Go Green!
I’m fascinated by this. Watch the short video (the transcript is below) to see how changing the way we at look at something, is key to making us do things differently – change behaviour, in other words.
As you’ll see in the video below, one university campus kept the price of coffee the same, changed the wording – and made people go green!
In the University of Winchester in the UK, they used almost 200,000 disposable cups each year in their canteen.
These types of cups are very difficult to recycle, because they’re made of a mixture of paper and plastic. So hardly any got recycled.
But students who brought a reusable cup with them, were offered a discount of 25p. This encouraged some students to bring their own reusable cups – but not that many.
So the University decided to try something different, in order to change behaviour.
- They no longer offered that discount for the reusable cup.
- Instead, they CUT the price of the coffee by 25p. And charged a 25p penalty to anyone who wanted a disposable cup.
- They also gave out free reusable cups to all 1st-year students.
So, think about it. The cost is the same. But the expectation is different – you need to bring your reusable cup, or else you are penalised with extra cost.
And astonishingly, it’s working! In the first year, the campus saved 34,000 disposable cups – and it’s proving ever more popular. And there was no decline in drinks sales.
Isn’t that fascinating!
We’ve seen the same thing with plastic bags. Penalise people, and they change behaviour – adopt better habits.
If that’s what it takes to get people to make simple changes to their behaviour in order to be less cruel to the planet, then I’m all for it!
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Warm regards,
P.S.  Don’t forget to download your free green living handbook “Live Well, Live Green” here.