Gray And Green Matters 2 – Making a case for change and making it easy

If you been at UBC for enough time you’ve probably had an issue come up, what trash can do I throw my trash in?

Placing an item in the wrong area leads to waste. Waste that ends up in landfills and at the end of the day is very expensive.

In fact a UBC waste audit estimated that only 9.3% of UBC’s waste was non recyclable! UBC then began to implement it Zero waste plan.

The plan puts forward the following milestones and targets:

• Implement multi-stream recycling stations and communications across campus by end of 2015, targeting food scraps collection by mid-2015.
• Increase overall diversion rates to 70 per cent diversion by 2016, and 80 per cent diversion by 2020

Luckily there have been a number of things that have help people make better decisions by increasing awareness (such as through posts like this!) and making the decision easier to make at the point of disposal.

On the decision making side UBC has reduced the number of waste streams by eliminating single type waste bins whose unsorted contents would go straight to landfill. It is also trying to make the signage clearer. In fact several faculties and building have taken this a step further like Sauder and Liu institute. However I learned that there are bin branding guidelines that faculties must follow and many of these modifications are off guide.

On one hand I understand that Sustain UBC wants to have a consistent bin look across campus but much of their own web content is often out of date (look at the 2nd paragraph). In fact the model of general guidance from the top and local ability to experiment could be based on a Green Labs style of faculty specific modifications/experiments. The key to this model is that information what works and what doesn’t is shared and used to further the goals of the program  like a postmortem conference/FailCon (2011 – Uber Case Study).

This is all very interesting because as sustainability marketers we are using behavioral psychology, design and communication to promote a noticeable change in behavior. Furthermore we use A/B/Z and iterative testing to make our impact better targeted and more effective.

Either way it looks like UBC is on its way to reach many of its sustainability goals like the Zero Waste Plan (Oct 3, 2014)!