Busting myths is essential to helping people make green choices, argues Philippa Ward, a partner at environmental charity Global Action Plan which specialises in behaviour change.
I’m about to discuss packaging. Please don’t stop reading. Give me a chance.
Packaging can be quite interesting. To test my theory, try this small experiment:
• Take two cucumbers.
• Wash your hands.
• Unwrap one and leave the other in wrapping.
• Check after three days. Discover the unwrapped one has gone a bit squishy.
• Check again after 14 days. Discover unwrapped one makes your skin crawl. Make cucumber sandwiches from the juicy, crisp wrapped one.
This is the kind of experiment we will doing with children as part of a school project on how packaging isn’t always a bad thing. It is always good to have a substantial amount of ‘ick’ factor when talking to 13-year olds, so letting things go mouldy will be an obligatory party of this. However, it is part of a more serious point and one which is a key part of any behaviour-change campaign: myth-busting.
One of the things that we often find stops people acting in our projects is a belief in myths. Sadly, I’m not talking dragons here. Instead, they think that turning the heating up to maximum will heat a room more quickly or that cycling is slower than driving in cities. There are usually very good reasons for thinking these things, so they need to be worked through and talked about before the project can move on.
When I was involved with community discussion around an eco-supermarket in south London a few years ago, we talked to the public about key issues. Most people mentioned packaging as the biggest problem they wanted to see their supermarket address, rather than food waste or the lack of public transport to the shop. In actual fact, our research showed that this is where the biggest impact lay. To get to those impacts and start doing things differently, we first had to get past the myths.
Which is why a recent study by Forum for the Future, which found that consumers are prepared to boycott brands that do not choose the most environmentally-friendly option for packaging, is both encouraging and worrying. Consumer choice is the main thing that will drive innovation and change within business. However, if consumers are making those choices based on myths, the market will be distorted and the potential for greenwash is increased.
As always, technology needs to accompanied by behaviour change to have the right impact – in this case, talking to people about their perceptions around packaging. Not the easiest or most immediately interesting conversation to have. Hence the mouldy cucumbers and the project with schoolchildren.
