The Climate Change Collective is an initiative where the blogging community unites behind a common goal. This month, I’m leading off the conversation with a look at the effectiveness of programs that provide incentives or penalties to encourage people to reduce their environmental footprint. What do you think? Do people respond better to the carrot or the stick?
Incentives to reduce our environmental footprint
During my recent trip to Ireland, I was intrigued by their new Deposit Return Scheme for beverage containers. Introduced earlier this year, the scheme adds a deposit of 15 to 25 cents on each plastic and aluminum beverage container. Yes, that’s every water bottle, every pop bottle and every plastic alcohol container.
Initial results show some impressive success, with over 500 million bottles returned from February to October. The number of returns has grown steadily each month since the program started in February. (Source: re-turn.ie)
Deposit return schemes work
We don’t have to look as far as Ireland for proof that these types of deposit return schemes work.
Here in Ontario, we’ve paid a deposit on beer and alcohol containers for years. The Beer Store’s most recent stewardship report shows they accepted back more containers for refund and recycling in 2023 than they sold across their system that year. In the same year, Ontarians returned 98% of all refillable beer bottles sold in the province. The breweries refill those bottles an average of 15 times before eventually recycling them.
The success of these programs in Ireland and Ontario makes me wonder why we don’t have similar programs everywhere. If the price of a case of 24 bottles of water went up from $4.49 to $8.08, would it be enough to deter people from buying it? Or at the very least, would it increase our pitiful recycling rates (currently less than 10% in both Canada and the United States)?
Other examples of incentives and penalties
Over the years, other attempts to change consumer behaviour through incentives or penalties have seen limited success. Here are a few examples that come to mind.
- Several years ago, the supermarket where I do most of my shopping incentivized the use of reusable shopping bags by awarding loyalty points to customers who brought their own bags. Despite the incentive, we really didn’t see widespread behaviour change until they started charging for plastic shopping bags and eventually eliminating them from stores altogether.
- Similarly, McDonald’s and Tim Horton’s give customers who bring their own refillable mugs a 10-cent discount on their takeout coffee. In the three years my daughter worked at McDonald’s, she said no-one ever brought their own mug and most staff wouldn’t be able to find the button on the cash register to apply the discount. Perhaps adding 25 cents to the price of coffee in a single-use cup would be more successful in changing behaviour.
- Locally, our Waste Management department has seen high adoption of our green bin program for food waste since they reduced the frequency of garbage pickup and added a $3 per bag fee for households putting out more than 3 bags of trash on garbage day.
These examples make it clear. The stick works better than the carrot when it comes to incentivizing behaviour change. Behavioural scientists call that loss aversion—people feel the pain of a loss more than the joy of an equivalent gain.
In the very first post I wrote for the Climate Change Collective in 2022, I discussed the impact of climate change on our health and our finances. In that piece, I asked what it would take for people to change their behaviour. Since that first post, we’ve seen increases in climate-related disasters like forest fires, widespread flooding, and other extreme weather events. Despite the dire economic consequences of those events, many still refuse to change their behaviour. They view climate change as a “faraway problem” for someone else to solve.
It’s easy to get frustrated but, along with reducing our own environmental footprint, there are things we can all do to influence behaviour.
How you can influence behaviour
Continue to lead by example. Social pressure is a powerful thing and it’s one of the most successful behavioural interventions. So, if enough of us bring our reusable shopping bags and refillable mugs, it will become the norm.
Send a message with your vote. Do your homework and vote for candidates and parties with solid environmental platforms. Above all, don’t be fooled by cries like “Axe the Tax” that are designed to get an emotional reaction and aren’t based in fact. (See Some facts about Canada’s carbon tax for the truth about the much-hated and misunderstood carbon tax that will surely be a divisive issue in Canada’s next federal election.)
Hold your elected officials accountable. If you hear of policies that don’t make environmental sense, let your local, provincial or state, or federal representative know. In a recent episode of the Sustainable Minimalists podcast, Stephanie Seferian revealed that politicians rarely hear from their constituents. If even a handful of people contact them on the same issue, they pay attention. Your voice matters!
Let’s keep in touch! Join my mailing list and I’ll email you when I add a new post.
About the Climate Change Collective
The Climate Change Collective started after I left a comment on a blog post by Jamie Ad Stories. Jamie and I wanted to find a way to keep the climate change message top of mind for everyone, so I put out a tweet to see what kind of interest there would be in a climate-change-related blogging collaboration. The Climate Change Collective was born!
The members of the collective take turns writing a monthly blog post sharing their unique perspective about climate change. After the post is published, the rest of the group keeps the conversation going by sharing a link to the post on their blogs along with their thoughts and ideas.
If you’re a like-minded blogger and would like to join our collective, please get in touch. More voices joining the conversation means more attention to the problems plaguing our planet!
More Climate Change Collective posts
The Climate Change Collective series has been going strong for over two years. See Two years of the Climate Change Collective series for a recap of the posts we published in the first two years.
Recent posts in the series
- Is Climate Change Overlooked in Schools? – Jamie Ad Stories
- Highlighting Useful Ways to be Sustainable This Winter – Transatlantic Notes
Do you have examples of programs that have been effective incentives to get people to reduce their environmental footprint? Tell me your thoughts below.
Discover more from Boomer Eco Crusader
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It’s really interesting to think about what motivates people to change or adopt different behaviours. Both the carrot and the stick methods work well under the right circumstances or implementation. My husband returns pop bottles in Michigan as they have a scheme for recycling them and you get 10c per bottle (definitely motivates hims, haha)!
That reminds me of when we were kids and gathered up pop bottles to return them for the deposit. We thought we had hit the jackpot.
I have been taking an interesting online course on Behavior Change for Climate Action. Different tactics work for different people, and some of it comes down to how much they believe in climate change and whether they believe it’s a threat to them.
Wow! I am really impressed by this return scheme and can see value in the stick.
I know my friends react quicker to sticks than carrots.
It is a shame that politicians seem to push away environmental policies as the Labour government seem to have done since taking control of the UK.
I know. I was really impressed by it, too. They are seeing great success. Our current government has tried to do the right thing, but I fear we will have a conservative government in our next election and they will pander to the oil lobby. It’s so frustrating.
Fascinating analysis, Michelle. Thank you!
Thanks Wynne. It is interesting to see the impact of these initiatives.
By people, do you mean people people or “Corporations people”? People respond better to the carrot, but you need to use the stick for corporations. They already have piled up tons of carrots. They don’t just need a stick, they need a Teddy Roosevelt sized stick.
I was generally referring to individual people. I agree with you on the corporations. Perhaps a baseball bat would do! 😂
You ask such a great question, Michelle. Paul and I were just discussing the confusing, “supposed” incentives re: solar energy and rebates, incentives. Maybe it’s just in our State that things are messy but I suspect not. People who want to take action, be proactive, need clear pathways to do so. Thank you for your post! 😊
I think it’s messy everywhere, largely because it’s hard to get people to pay attention to this stuff and to really understand it. Canada’s federal government has a carbon pricing system that actually rebates to most taxpayers more than they pay in carbon tax. The idea is that heavy users pay more. But the opposition party is using it as a wedge issue. It’s so frustrating.
Sigh…sigh…sigh. 😔
It does feel like we’re swimming against the tide sometimes. 🤗
It does…but your reminders and those from others who see all the possibilities keep hope alive! 🥰
Thank you. That’s my goal. 🤗
🥰🌞🥰