Waste and Circular Economy Collaboration
INSIGHTS FROM THREE BEHAVIOUR CHANGE PROJECTS

This website shares the results of a research collaboration led by BehaviourWorks Australia (BWA) and its partners to explore and better understand how behavioural insights can be used to encourage households, businesses and the whole Australian community to avoid, reduce, reuse and recycle waste and improve the livability and sustainability of our cities and regions.

The collaboration leverages the combined missions, reach, resources and expertise of the following BWA Consortium partners: Sustainability Victoria, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (Vic), Environment Protection Authority (Vic), Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment and NSW Environment Protection Authority, with contributions from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry, and Environment.

Three streams of research were conducted between 2019-2021

RESEARCH STREAMS

Kerbside Recycling Contamination

This project focuses on reducing contamination of household recycling at the kerbside and identify strategies to encourage Australians to purchase fewer hard-to-recycle products/packaging, clean and separate packaging and deliver plastics to an appropriate destination.

Click on the link below to learn more about this research stream and access publicly available research outputs.

LINK to project page

2. Effectiveness of product labelling schemes

The aim of this project was to understand whether 'eco-labels' (e.g. 'Australian Certified Organic') are effective in changing consumer and business behaviour and to what extent labelling schemes can be used to promote and increase producer and consumer adoption of circular products and services.

Click on the link below to learn more about this research stream and access publicly available research outputs.

LINK to project page

3. Business Barriers to a Circular Economy

This project seeks to gain a better understanding of business barriers to the adoption of circular economy practices, consumer perceptions of CE products and strategies that policymakers can use to enable the transition to CE, including innovation diffusion.

Click on the link below to learn more about this research stream and access publicly available research outputs.

LINK to project page

IMPACT STORIES

How has this collaboration impacted individuals, groups, and communities so far? Check out our 'Impact Stories' page to read more on our real-world contributions, the significance of these outcomes, and testimonials from our industry partners and other participatory stakeholders.

FIND OUT MORE

You can read about the approach used to identify the research agenda in Chapter 2 of the BehaviourWorks Method book, HERE.

Prefer to hear it? Listen to a 17-minute excerpt (Mp3) from a podcast interview conducted by the Collaborating Centre for Sustainable Consumption's Academy of Change, EU, with Project Founder, Dr. Stefan Kaufman, HERE.

Any questions? Contact our Program Founder, Stefan Kaufman directly here, or email us at behaviourworksaustralia@monash.edu. Please also consider giving feedback at the bottom of this page once you have reviewed the outputs; and if the research made a difference for you or your organisation, please share the story at the bottom of the page.