Browsing by Subject "biowaste recycling"

Effective utilization of organic materials can advance the transition away from fossil dependency which is critical in order to restrict the global increase in temperature. Household biowaste can be reutilized through anaerobic digestion to produce organic nitrogen fertilizers for agriculture, which reduces the large, often fossil-based, energy inputs required in the production of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Properly recycled biowaste can additionally be used as a raw material for biogas, which can be used as an alternative for fossil-based energy sources. Regardless of these considerable opportunities, large amounts of household biowaste remains unrecycled. Though previous research has shown that recycling behavior is a result of several factors and cannot be depicted entirely accurately, different interventions have demonstrated their capability to improve recycling performance. These interventions have the ability to change either one or more of the three domains that have been theorized to be critical for any behavior to happen: capability, opportunity and motivation. This thesis strives to understand behavioral barriers for biowaste recycling in households and propose targeted behavioral change interventions in Helsinki metropolitan region where nearly 40% of the household mixed waste was unrecycled biowaste in 2021. This is done by analyzing the data derived from an external consumer behavior survey commissioned by Helsinki Region Environmental Services and conducted by Innolink. This research focuses on evaluating the suitability of nudges, enablement, incentives and communication/marketing through social media as means to enhance biowaste recycling performance in Helsinki metropolitan region based on the results from the data-analysis. Area specific research on behavior barriers is required to introduce suitable interventions as recycling behavior is complex and behavior barriers might vary between different groups. Results from this research show that household biowaste recycling performance can be enhanced by using nudges to improve social opportunity as well as automatic motivation, service provision to improve physical opportunity, fiscal measures to improve automatic-, and reflective motivation, and social media to improve reflective motivation. Successful delivery of these interventions can advance the fulfillment of the requirement in the HSY area that oblige biowaste separation in residential properties.