Healthy Living – The Widening Lure of Incentives

Behavioral economics – it’s not just for health care anymore.
My family and I recently received notice our household refuse collector is rolling out a new program in our neighborhood to encourage better consumer waste recycling habits.  It struck me that the parallels between the challenges to unsustainable health care costs and landfill overuse are close – improvable behavior sits squarely on the shoulders of both.  
Without the right encouragement, it turns out the individual consumer takes care of the environment about as well as they take care of their own health, disposing of nearly five pounds of trash a day (56 tons a year) and separating out only about 10% of it for recycling purposes.  Taking care of the environment and taking care of our bodies isn’t nearly as difficult as our behaviors exemplify.  But the path of least resistance is rarely the road less traveled when it comes to human nature.
But here’s the positive part – the individual will to change unhealthy behavior is intrinsic.  We all want to live in healthier bodies and on a healthier planet.  But when it comes to making our way there, a helpful push can go a long way.
Taking a cue from what we’ve already learned from improving modifiable health behavior, the household waste recycling program in my neighborhood is similarly structured – leveraging sophisticated technology to track and reward individuals for the specific amount of waste material they separate weekly for recycling pick-up,  household recycling bins are directly linked to an online consumer account where individuals can keep track of the recycling points they earn (based on pounds of material recycled), and they convert their earned points to gift cards or community donations of their choice.  Making it rewarding, personal and also easy – we well know how important those three elements are in the effort to reshape unhealthy lifestyle behaviors.
I was curious to find out if this program was having comparable success to similarly structured healthy lifestyle reward programs.  Looking into it further, I wasn’t surprised to discover it was.  In most communities the recycling rewards program has been introduced, recycling volume is at least doubling.  One of the case studies I read indicated recycling rates increasing by 200% since it was introduced 18 months earlier in its community.  Casual recyclers are turning into ardent recyclers, and those who don’t recycle at all begin doing so.
Similar to our industry, the small subsidy to encourage behavior change creates a substantial payback.  Cities and towns are spending less on landfill development while sharing the revenue spikes from recycled material sales.  Haulers are saving money on equipment wear and tear and operational efficiencies.  Just as with health behavior change, the ratio of investment to reward is significant.
We all want to take better care of our health, better care of our planet.  Most of us just need the right mix of encouragement and support to do so.