Nudge nudge, bag bag

I was in our local Tesco the other day and the woman on the till asked me an interesting question.  Or at least it was of interest to someone like me who's intrigued by language.  She asked:   

"Have you got your bags with you?"

As it happens I did.  The two people in front of me in the queue had theirs too.  I wrote last year about Tesco opening at Bramley Shopping Centre.  They gave away re-usable bags for the first few weeks, and it's striking how many people still use them.  

It's in the news today that supermarkets just missed their target of 50% reduction in plastic bag use (they got to 48%).  I'm not a big fan of supermarkets but I think on this one they need to be congratulated.  Remember the reaction against proposals to tax plastic bags, and how, many believed, people would never change their habits.  

Far too many bags are still used but a 48% reduction is a massive improvement.  If businesses and the public can get their act together on this issue, what other seemingly impossible environmental problems might we solve?  It may also suggest that it's better to nudge people into doing the right thing (like the clever question the checkout assistant was trained to ask), rather than taxing them into behavioural change.  

I was cycling home the other day and I could see a plastic bag floating down the road, tumbleweed style, towards me.  It got caught in my chain and wrapped itself around my rear sprocket.  My bike came to a sudden halt, and it took me half an hour to pull all the bits of plastic out.  It felt like one final, desperate act of revenge from a dying breed.  

Comments

[Tom at ClearlySo]

Great post, Rob - and you're right - credit where it's due. It's easy for the 'social business community' to criticise the likes of Tesco, but a nigh-on 50% reduction in plastic bag usage is a great achievement and should be lauded as such.

[Liam Black]

heard that ed miliband the other night at a Nesta event and there was an interesting debate about persuasion vs compulsion to change consumption patterns to help us avoid frying in the future. he said he was in the "persuasion business". the plastic shopping bag story is a good albeit small example of how a smart bit of point of sale activity can change patterns. it's an easy give for the supermarkets to be sure but welcome nonetheless. it would be interesting to compare the real impact of this reusable bag tactic with the impacts of all the social enterprise recycling across the country.

i think Rob that compulsion/incentivistion through the tax system will be required too if we are to bring about the profound shifts needed but there is no doubt that smart pieces of alignment such as the bags can are critical too.

[Rob Greenland]

Tom, Liam, thanks for your comments. Liam you're right that the plastic bags example is small fry compared to some of the other environmental challenges we face. Flying is definitely the key one. I've been invited along to a demonstration outside Leeds Civic Hall on wednesday to campaign against plans for expanding Leeds Bradford airport. Should I go? I don't know. Part of me thinks I should but another part thinks that my limited time should be spent on other things - like learning more about how I can work with organisations to nudge people into doing the right thing - eg cut down on flying.

Stopping LBA expanding will seem like a local victory - and the debate around it may stimulate some people into considering how often they fly. It will also mean fewer planes flying over my house. But won't most people just fly from Manchester instead if LBA doesn't expand? The solution surely is in people's minds more than in decisions about infrastructure.

[Gill Coupland]

I too had the TESCO experience and was really very impressed by the way the question was posed, I'm sure they used to say 'would you like any bags'. I thought at the time I might have felt ashamed had I not had my bags. I wonder also however if I should be worried that they are quite so brilliant at the psychology of shopping?

Also, as I am out and about on my bike in this lovely weather, what's a sprocket? Just in case I get something tangled round mine!

[adrian thacker]

Hate to sound misanthropic on this but plastic bags aren't the real problem. I'm sick of seeing psuedo middle class people congratulating themselves using jute or wicker bags as they load them into a 4.2 litre BMW X5.

I always re-use carriers for sub-packaging domestic waste because the council don't use bins which means vermin can bite through refuse sacks. So i feel i'm being 'nudged' towards buying small plastic pedal liners from, erm, Tesco.

And another thing - why are the designs so feminine when us men do half the shopping?

[Rob Greenland]

It's a fair point Adrian - it'd be interesting to see the sales figures for pedal bin liners.

But given that I don't live in a part of Leeds with a load of X5s, I remain hopeful. Dare I say "ordinary" people who shop at my local Tesco have changed their habits in a way that would have been unthinkable 12 months ago. Yes, it's a small step, but I think that's how bigger behavioural changes take place.

On the shopping bags front, I'd steer clear of the wicker and jute and go for the German style cotton bags. I've got about 50 - I'll send you one!

[Scott MacLean]

I have a cat. Cats make poo. There is only way to wrap this up with the used cat litter before putting it in the garbage, and that is in a plastic bag. I can't put cat poo in my super dooper compost bin (www.aerobin.com.au) because it's too toxic. Ditto in the garden. I suppose I could avoid use of plastic bags by shooting the cat, but that seems a little over the top.

If I don't receive plastic bags with my shopping, then I have to buy them (as alluded to by an earlier post).

I guess I am arguing that there is a place for everything __in moderation__ ... even plastic bags.

[John Stobart]

A large part of the reason that so many bags are used is because supermarkets stock "fast moving consumer goods" (fmcg in the jargon) that are over-packaged. Think about it for a moment. Picture your local supermarket in your mind. Mentally walk down the aisles. What do you see? Packaging mostly, I think. Colourful boxes, jars, packets, bottles and some things with more than one - i.e. a jar inside a box.

I'm in favour of reducing waste but until there is a reduction in the quantity of fmcg packaging I doubt the campaign for the prevention of plastic bags will have much real impact.

[Rob Greenland]

Thanks for your comments Scott and John. Scott, personally I'd shoot the cat but that's more to do with me not liking cats.

There's an issue here about internalisation and externalisation of environmental costs. There is a monetary and environmental cost in disposing of your cat's poo. At the moment you are externalising that cost by using free bags from your supermarket. They (we all) pay for that- and I'd argue that a bag that's not really fit for purpose is used to deal with your environmental problem.

If you internalise the cost (pay for the bags yourself - and buy appropriate bags) you will get a true idea of the cost of owning a cat. That may help you to make an informed decision as to whether the cost of a cat is justified. Internalising costs in this way may also indicate where there is potential for innovation (and money to be made) in the cat poo bag market - and we may end up with a better poo bag.

I'm half joking of course - but there's a point in there.

John - I agree that there's a massive - and bigger issue - around packaging. The thing that interests me about the plastic bags thing is that it HAS had an impact - 48% fewer carrier bags than before. That impact may pale into insignificance compared to the packaging waste issue - but I believe that people will move on from the bags issue to the packaging issue - and soon there'll be a campaign to leave packaging at the till like consumers have done in Germany.

[Max Atkinson]

Thoroughly approve of the nudge-nudge approach, and have added a couple more automated suggestions at http://maxatkinson.blogspot.com/2009/07/nudging-in-more-enlightened-direction.html (via Bloggers' Circle).

[Chris Cook]

In Norway most bottles and cans have to be sold with a deposit ("pant") and the supermarkets have machines where you can feed them in and get a ticket you use against purchases.

You often see entrepreneurial kids at events or in parks hoovering up the bottles and cans that get left by the more pissed Norwegians, or those who can't be arsed.

The system works well to recycle a high proportion of bottles and cans, and with the right enterprise model would work here too.

[Graeme Tiffany]

When I travel on quality trains on the continent, especially long distance, I often remember the time when the government's public transport rationale was explained to me. A French guy told me that, in essence, the state simply shouts "get out of the way, we're coming through". In the long term, hardly anyone ever moans. I guess the answer then is that coercion is reasonable, so long as its good coercion. The challenge, it goes without saying, is to identify what good is. I suspect its got more to do with leadership than what focus groups and consumerism demand.

[Robert Ashton]

We have a Sainsbury fridge magnet on our toaster that says; 'take an old bag shopping'. It makes me laugh every day and what's more - we do!

[Rob Greenland]

Thanks for the comments. Graeme, I suppose that's why a nudge is an interesting concept as it is quite a low-level intervention - even though it might be very well thought through. That's why it's so appealing to politicians - the author of the Nudge book did the rounds of the political parties last year.

Robert - that's a bit more nudge nudge wink wink - and I'm sure it works!

[Chris Atherton]

Having a deposits on bottles, cans and other packaging (as suggested by Chris Cook) seems to work well as a litter-prevention and recycling "nudge". In Vancouver, the trashcans on the street have a little rail on which people leave their bottles and cans, rather than putting them into the can. The homeless (of whom Vancouver sadly has many) trawl the streets collecting the bottles and cans and returning them for deposits (obviously they pick up any just left in the street as well as by the trashcans). Obviously I'm not advocating this as a substitute for good social policy on homelessness — Vancouver's homelessness situation is a pretty crushing indictment of political apathy on that score — but if it helps people eat while the politicians drag their feet, I'm all for it.

[Mike Chitty]

Your point about a willingness to internalise costs that could be externalised is well made. A TRULY social enterprise would be rigorous about avoiding externalising ANY costs. This is much easier said than done.

Many social enterprises externalise many of their true costs through a dependency on grants and funding from taxation. That is a weird definition of 'social' in my book.

[Rob Greenland]

Thanks Mike. I don't mind businesses receiving money from taxation as long as they (and the rest of us) are clear about what they are offering in return for that investment/funding. For me the issue there is that sometimes organisations are funded to do something because "something must be seen to be done". There's little real consideration as to whether the activity is making any difference. Politicians can point to the fact that all this activity is taking place. But is anything really changing as a result?

But that's a discussion for a whole new post....

[Geof Cox]

You might be interested in Funky Junk Recycled - beautiful things made from old plastic bags by some of the world's poorest people...
http://www.geofcox.info/index.php?q=node/27