Why is recycling more socially prevalent than water conservation?

Introduction

Why are people more aware of recycling than of water conservation? This is a question that I have pondered for at least a few weeks now.

The initial string of thought started with an offhand comment my friend made about the amount of water I was using to wash my plastic food container before recycling it. After the banter settled down, I thought about my recent actions. Clearly I care about the environment, then “why” is water conservation not as often on my mind as recycling?

I was now intrigued and had to dig deeper. But first I needed to understand if this is localized to me or is somewhat prevalent in society, so I started a few threads of discussions with my friends and family.

Ideation

In my initial discussions, I noted a higher degree of awareness for recycling than for water conservation and associated discrepancies in resulting behaviors, such as focusing more on recycling than on water conservation. Since the people I was informally interviewing were already in the habit of recycling, I decided to create a more structured interview to understand their drive to continue recycling. The questions revolved around the following points:

1. Main drive/motivation for recycling
2. Triggers/reminders for recycling
3. Emotions (if any) associated with recycling or lack thereof when they forget to do so

Hypothesis

The combination of the responses from the formal structured interviews, the informal discussions, and a reflection on my behaviors helped me frame my hypothesis. I hypothesize that people tend to be more aware of recycling and hence recycle more often because of the following reasons:

1. Visual cues in public spaces: Public spaces often have well-marked and dedicated recycling bins. Frequent encounters with these bins can serve as an unconscious visual reminder to recycle.
2. Visual cues in private spaces: Private houses have separate bins for trash and recycling. The presence of and continuous maintenance of a dedicated recycling bin can serve as an unconscious visual reminder to recycle.
3. Role of public policy and design of public infrastructure: Typically municipalities require that household trash and recyclables be separated before collection. The repeated effort that people have to put into separating their trash and recycling helps build the habit of recycling.
4. Social accountability: It is very common for guests at a house to ask the hosts about their trash and recycling bin so that the guest can dispose of their waste properly. This common habit amongst people serves as a means for us to hold each other socially accountable and a reminder to recycle.
5. Role of visual stimuli in augmenting our reward system: Since we can visually perceive “how” much material we have recycled, it triggers our reward system; thereby helping us “feel good” about the effort we are putting in to save the environment. This further promotes continued recycling.

The above factors such as visual cues/stimuli, social accountability, public policy, and public infrastructure do not have a similar impact on water conservation efforts and hence people have a lower tendency to indulge in behaviors dedicated to water conservation.

Future Work

Now that I have identified an issue and have a hypothesis, I am going to try to come up with a solution that uses the principles that I think have made recycling efforts successful.