Loading Close. Do Not Show Again Close. Companies are seeing a dramatic increase in the complexity and costs of managing their waste and at the same time public concern over the effects of all this waste has grown.
Innovative companies are incorporating waste reduction principles into their daily operations. What exactly is waste reduction? It includes waste prevention, recycling, composting, and the purchase and manufacture of goods that have recycled content or produce less waste. Businesses are reviewing their entire operation to identify and implement as many opportunities for reducing waste as possible.
Waste reduction can help protect the environment as it slows the depletion of natural resources; helps reduce pollution associated with the extraction of raw materials and the manufacture of products as well as conserves valuable landfill space.
Some waste reduction efforts also serve to reduce hazardous constituents in solid waste. Waste Reduction Approaches Recycling is the collection and use of materials that would otherwise have been discarded as the raw material in the manufacture of new products. Composting is a natural process by which food scraps, yard trimmings, and other organic materials are collected and allowed to decompose under controlled conditions into a rich, soil-like substance called compost.
The most effective way to reduce your company's waste is to generate less in the first place. The results suggest that both contextual factors e. Our model of household recycling appeared to provide the best explanation of context-specific recycling of the three models, despite the additional explanatory variables included in our model of workplace recycling to anticipate differences between behavioral control in the workplace and other contexts.
Finally, consistency across contexts was explored by calculating an absolute difference score between the percentage of waste recycled at home and in the workplace lab , and between home and their last holiday. This score was then used as a dependent variable in a linear regression with pro-environmental identity as predictor to determine to what extent pro-environmental identity explains cross-context consistency.
Our qualitative interviews showed that attitudes to recycling are largely positive, though there are barriers e. Indeed, the survey reinforces this finding, with contextual and control factors recycling facilities, PBC at least as important for predicting recycling as individual motivational or normative factors e. However, there were different predictors across contexts: Home recycling was predicted negatively by attitude, and positively by PBC and knowledge; Holiday recycling was predicted positively by PBC, recycling facilities, and personal norm; and work recycling was marginally positively predicted by pro-environmental identity.
Overall, the TPB did not provide a sufficient explanation for recycling behavior in any location: social norms were not significant in any context, perhaps because recycling is now relatively normative, particularly amongst highly educated groups, such as the population we studied here cf. Schultz et al. On the other hand, other non-TPB factors, such as recycling knowledge and personal norm, were found to be significant. The regression analysis shows attitude becomes a negative predictor when knowledge, PBC and recycling facilities were added to the equation.
This negative role of attitude in home recycling is unexpected and difficult to explain. However, one possible explanation is that the inclusion of both knowledge and attitude creates an over-controlled model Wooldridge, Therefore, it is possible that the negative effect of attitude is a way in which, when controlling for the practical aspects—what, where and how to recycle—more abstract views about recycling do not always translate into recycling but the opposite cf.
De Young, Once variation in recycling due to recycling-knowledge is accounted for in the model, the remaining variation due to attitudes alone may represent only an abstract positivity toward the idea of recycling, and this abstract positivity may tend to increase to the extent that a participant does not actually engage with the reality of daily recycling.
Indeed, we found few significant predictors of recycling at work, perhaps because there are strong institutional factors that impede the translation of TPB factors or other measured predictors into individual action by laboratory workers: such institutional factors are indicated by the interviews e.
Future research should therefore not assume TPB is equally valid across contexts and in particular should employ more organizational models cf. Our regression analyses also included variables not found in the TPB, which previous research indicated could improve upon a TPB explanation of waste-reduction behavior.
Notably, we found personal norm to be a significant predictor of recycling on holiday, perhaps because motivation and ability to be pro-environmental on holiday tend to be lower than in everyday contexts Barr et al. This is also consistent with the significant correlations observed between holiday recycling and all domestic waste reduction behaviors, suggesting those doing more waste reduction at home are the ones that take these habits on holiday.
It would be interesting for future research to explore whether other models, such as the Value-Belief-Norm VBN model—which posits that personal norm is the proximal driver of pro-environmental action—would work better than TPB in certain contexts, such as on holiday. Consistent with expectations and the prior literature e. All domestic waste behaviors recycling, reuse, reduce were related; and both workplace behaviors recycling, reuse were related.
Across contexts, the picture is more mixed: while recycling across the three contexts was significantly correlated, home and lab reuse behaviors were not. Holiday recycling, however, was significantly related to all domestic waste behaviors not only recycling.
Together, these findings suggest there are more barriers to waste reduction recycling and reuse outside the domestic context than within it; and that contextual factors e. At the same time as there being considerable variation across contexts, though, we also see heterogeneity across behaviors: recycling is more common than other waste reduction behaviors consistent with other UK-based research, e.
Domestic recycling has been the focus of much environmental campaigning and of environmental psychological research for many years, and it is now widely practiced Whitmarsh, , but other waste reduction behaviors are less well-known and may be more difficult for individuals, due to structural constraints e.
Where policy measures have promoted these other behaviors, their adoption has increased, notably in the case of carrier bag reuse Poortinga et al.
We tested whether pro-environmental identity was a significant predictor of cross-contextual consistency in recycling, and found that it was not. This is in contrast to most spillover models e. Future work should explore other possible mediators for situational spillover, such as self-efficacy Nash et al. The study highlights that both individual factors e. It may be that no single model e. Similarly, the practical implication of these findings is that no single solution exists to improve waste reduction across diverse contexts, such as home, workplace and holiday settings.
Indeed, there are also likely to be different measures required within each context to address different forms of waste reduction, including recycling, reuse and reduction behaviors. Recycling requires different forms of intervention or support e.
This study adopted a mixed-method design, but did not undertake longitudinal or experimental analyses to ascertain causal pathways between behaviors.
Further work is needed to explore whether one behavior e. Our research also relied on self-reported recycling behavior, rather than observed recycling. Previous research shows these are positively correlated Huffman et al.
Our measures could also be improved and expanded. For example, we asked about reuse of items in the home but there may be wide interpretations of what this applies to e. More generally, there is a need for a greater range of reuse and reduction behaviors in future studies than we were able to include here, and to explore the range of determinants of these behaviors as well as of recycling. We also note that our knowledge measure particularly relating to the lab had rather low reliability and could be improved in future work.
Finally, our research focussed on one type of workplace i. Future research should consider expanding cross-contextual spillover studies to other kinds of work environment e. This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the British Psychological Society with written informed consent from all subjects.
All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. LW designed the research, conducted the statistical analysis, and led the writing. PH assisted with statistical analysis and contributed to writing. MT undertook and analyzed the interviews, and contributed to writing.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. We are grateful to the interviewees and survey respondents who gave up their time to participate in this research. Ajzen, I. The theory of planned behaviour. Allwood, J. Material efficiency: a white paper. Andersson, M. The effects of environmental management systems on source separation in the work and home settings.
Sustainability 4, — Austin, A. Exploring Catalyst Behaviours: Full Report. London: Brook Lyndhurst. Google Scholar. Barr, S. Attitudes towards recycling household waste in Exeter, Devon: quantitative and qualitative approaches. Local Environ. Bratt, C. The impact of norms and assumed consequences on recycling behavior.
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Reexamining the theory of planned behavior in understanding wastepaper recycling. Cohen, S. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. JavaScript appears to be disabled on this computer. Please click here to see any active alerts. For decades, manufacturers have been implementing projects to eliminate or reduce the creation of chemical waste.
Source reduction is the practice of reducing the quantity or toxicity of waste generated prior to recycling, treatment or disposal, by changing the processes that generate pollution in the first place.
The analyses presented on this page are a synopsis and update of the findings published in October Pollution Prevention P2 - An innovative approach to environmental management through the elimination of pollution prior to recycling, treatment, or disposal.
Waste Minimization - The reduction of the generation and toxicity of hazardous waste materials such as paint cans, pesticides, and motor oil before disposal or storage.
Each year, counties complete a SR Credit Checklist of their source reduction activities. Activities include yard waste reduction composting , public education programs, and research. Maryland was the third state to offer a source reduction credit, after Minnesota and Oregon. Since the credit system went into effect in the year , the average source reduction credit claimed by Maryland counties has increased from 1.
MDE will continue to work with counties to get them more involved and to help them increase their source reduction activities. Besides helping to reach the State's
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