Five million for research to encourage more people to recycle

Can more bottles and cans be recycled by changing the design and placement of recycling bins? And how can reverse vending machines be redesigned to encourage more people to donate their deposits to charity?

The Swedish Energy Agency has awarded the University of Gävle and Luleå University of Technology five million SEK for a project aimed at increasing sustainability by influencing recycling behaviour.

“The deposit-return system in Sweden is important and effective, but there are opportunities to influence people’s behaviour to make the system’s contribution to ecological and social sustainability even greater,” says Patrik Sörqvist, professor of psychology, who leads the three-year research project.

One challenge is the growing demand for the collection of recyclable bottles and cans in public spaces. The research project will develop and test methods to make this process as efficient as possible.

However, the major challenges with recycling plastic bottles and cans do not primarily concern Sweden.

“In Sweden, nearly 90 percent of all deposit bottles and cans are recycled, but internationally, the rate is much lower. With this project, we aim to make Sweden even better at recycling bottles and cans and then spread this knowledge internationally,” Patrik Sörqvist says.

Psychological methodology is crucial when aiming to influence behaviour, explains Patrik Sörqvist, who specialises in environmental psychology. A previous study at the University showed that the placement of recycling bins has a much greater impact on people’s behaviour than their habits and attitudes towards recycling. Therefore, the researchers will study how the appearance and placement of bins affect recycling, and how reverse vending machines can be designed to increase the recycling rate and encourage more people to donate their deposits to charity.

“We want to tweak the design of reverse vending machines and their donation process. For example, why isn’t there a button that allows you to donate half of your deposit? We want to test such a button as well as other methods to see if such changes encourage more people to donate to charity,” Patrik Sörqvist says.

The three-year project is a collaboration with Luleå University of Technology, where Åsa Wikberg Nilsson, professor of design, participates. Other partners include the organisation Pantamera/Returpack, Gästrike återvinnare, and several companies that manufacture reverse vending machines and design and produce recycling bins. Mathias Cehlin, a researcher in energy systems at the University of Gävle, is also involved in the project. Additionally, two PhD students, one at each university, will be employed within the framework of the research project.

In the first year of the project, the researchers will mainly devote themselves to exploring the methods in depth and studying recycling behaviour. The second year will be dedicated to field experiments, and, in the third year, the researchers will evaluate the methods they tested and calculate the potential energy savings that the new methods may yield.