Making residents feel invested and valuing individual actions can help councils manage community behaviour around waste and recycling, a conference will hear.

Bethany Crotty, a consultant with social impact consultants Ellis Jones, will talk about some of the challenges facing councils she’s worked with at a waste sector forum in Melbourne this month.

Ms Crotty has been working with local governments in metropolitan Victoria to communicate messages around waste management since 2018.

As councils continue to introduce changes to align with state waste reduction targets, Ms Crotty will share insights about how to shift community behaviours at Waste Expo Australia on October 26.

“We’ve worked with a few different councils on communication campaigns to engage communities and shift their behaviours around waste,” she told Government News.

“For different councils it’s been slightly different, but generally it’s around things like changes in waste collection frequency, introduction of FOGO waste, introduction of grass recycling.”

Reducing landfill

Ms Crotty says Victoria has set an ambitious target of cutting landfill by 50 per cent by 2030.

For councils, that means the introduction of four waste collection streams – glass, recycling, food and organic waste (FOGO), and landfill.

For a lot of people waste is such an ingrained and habitual thing – it’s something that probably a lot of people don’t think too much about, so it can be a challenge to get people to change.

Bethany Crotty

She lists avoiding contamination, new and additional waste services, and the introduction of FOGO among the biggest change management issues.

“Changing peoples’ practices around FOGO waste has been a big one for us,” Ms Crotty says. “We’ve done a couple of campaigns on this and worked on a lot of messaging around the importance of removing food waste from landfill and the potential that it has as compost.”

Ms Crotty says residents aren’t averse to waste reduction initiatives, but there’s a natural resistance to change.

“For a lot of people waste is such an ingrained and habitual thing – it’s something that probably a lot of people don’t think too much about, so it can be a challenge to get people to change.”

Collective language

 A key approach to getting the community on board, Ms Crotty says, is to make every resident feel like their individual action is important.

“There are a few principles to getting the message across,” she says. “Such as connecting waste to things that residents care about, like emissions reductions and climate change.

“Other residents might be concerned about community health or having greener spaces, so finding out what your audience cares about and connecting waste to that is really important.”

Positioning councils as being there to support their residents is important, so using collective language and social norming language, as well so reminding residents of what other residents are doing, can be really huge in reinforcing that behaviour.

Bethany Crotty

Framing waste management as a collective challenge – something that ‘we’re all in together’ – is another effective strategy.

“Positioning councils as being there to support their residents is important, so using collective language and social norming language, as well so reminding residents of what other residents are doing, can be really huge in reinforcing that behaviour,” she says.

Communication becoming more sophisticated

Ms Crotty says the good news is that community attitudes to waste are changing and residents are generally prepared to get on board with waste reduction initiatives.

“I think people are recognising its’ an important issue,” she says.

“We just used to throw everything into landfill, but as we’ve introduced more changes around recycling there’s been heaps of communication.

“Now as we introduce newer streams of waste I think people are recognising that their waste has an impact.”

Councils are also becoming more sophisticated in how they communicate with their local communities, Ms Crotty says. 

“They’re definitely getting better at breaking down and explaining the waste process and the operations around it. It’s going to be an ongoing change.”

Waste Expo Australia will be held in Melbourne on Oct 26 and 27.

Read more: Meeting the challenges of FOGO