Household waste prevention — a review of evidence

Abstract

This paper reports a synthesis of policy-relevant evidence on household waste prevention, based on a UK portfolio of primary research and a broad international review. Waste prevention was defined as strict avoidance, reduction at source (e.g. home composting) and reuse (for the product's original purpose) - recycling was excluded. A major focus was on consumers. Waste prevention is not one but many behaviours; the review revealed a general hierarchy in their popularity, from donating goods to charity at the top; through small reuse behaviours around the home; to activities involving changes in consumption habits at the bottom; one estimate is that 60% of the public does at least one of these activities, some of the time. Barriers to engaging householders include both modern consumer culture and a genuine confusion that waste prevention is equivalent to recycling. The public can be engaged through local or national campaigns, with a wide range of interventions and communications approaches available. On the products and services side, the primary opportunity within the scope of the review was identified as increasing reuse. The barriers included operational difficulties (funding, capacity, logistics) and consumer attitudes towards second-hand goods. The main opportunities are to ensure more strategic planning for reuse by local authorities and better co-ordination and joint working with the third sector. The review examined the impact or potential of various policy measures designed to influence household behaviour directly or the products and services provided to them. Overall, the international evidence suggests that waste prevention benefits will be derived from a 'package' of measures, including, for example, prevention targets, producer responsibility, householder charging, funding for pilot projects, collaboration between the public, private and third sectors, and public intervention campaigns. UK evidence suggests that the greatest tonnage diversions can be achieved on food waste, home composting and bulky waste. The principal evidence gaps relate to robust and comprehensive quantitative data. Better evidence is needed of what actually works, and what outcomes (weight, carbon and costs) can be expected from different measures. More sensitive and effective monitoring and evaluation is needed to provide the evidence required to develop the necessary basket of future policy measures at local and national level.

Addressing the problems of food waste generation in Malaysia

“…If households understand that food waste leads to increase cost of waste management, water shortage, energy and impact food security, this knowledge will compel them to change behaviour on their consumption lifestyle. According to Cox et al (2010) creating awareness among households and making them to understand the food waste impacts on the environment is an effective component for behaviour change towards sustainable food waste disposal. Furthermore, enhancing knowledge on environmental education on households could start from preschool children, inculcating in them to understand their responsibilities as environmental stakeholder and making them to know they have responsibilities and roles to play to reduce wastage in their consumption behaviour.…”

Business waste prevention: a review of the evidence

“…Lack of 'joined-up' research, such as that sponsored by Defra on household waste behaviour (Brook Lyndhurst, SMP and RRF, 2009;Cox et al, 2010;Tucker and Douglas, 2007), means that the evidence base lacks coherence: motivations for, and barriers to, business waste prevention are therefore not fully understood. No studies were found that had used a systematic or theory-based approach to examine the behavioural drivers of waste prevention in business, including the relative importance of different drivers.…”

“…This article results from a major research project commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in England, which aimed to map and collate the available evidence on business waste prevention in order to help inform future policy development (Wilson et al, 2007). This complements earlier work on household waste prevention (Brook Lyndhurst, SMP and RRF, 2009;Cox et al, 2010). Taken together, the two reviews cover all aspects of both business and household waste prevention.…”

A Management Framework for Municipal Solid Waste Systems and Its Application to Food Waste Prevention

“…This issue is widespread throughout the waste field, and poor quality or unavailable data prohibits accurate system analyses and comparisons between programs [29]. Data on waste prevention are especially scarce and/or poor [48]. A major component of the waste management framework is the establishment of methods for the collection of sufficient data on a regular basis and analyzing well-defined performance indicators.…”