Does readily available recycling cause increased consumption? According to a recent study out of UC-Irvine
(#Kiron), yes it does.
In order to come to this conclusion, the authors ran two separate experiments. In the first, volunteers were divided into
two groups - one with recycling bins and one without – and asked to test a new
pair of scissors by cutting different shapes out of paper. The group with recycling bins used, on
average, almost twice as much paper as those without. In the second study, a recycling bin was
placed in a restroom on a university campus that previously only had a trash
can. After the recycling bin was
installed, paper towel usage increased.
One theory put forward for why this occurs is that the availability of
recycling might counteract the guilt that comes from over-consumption and
wastefulness. If the products are being
recycled, then you don’t really feel like you are wasting them. Sort of like the rebound effect, except that
instead of reducing monetary costs, you are reducing emotional costs.
We should note that the study only tested free resources. If these were products that had an actual
cost to the end user, we probably wouldn’t have seen a consumption
increase. Of course, we didn’t expect an
increase in the free scenario either, so hopefully there will be a follow up
study soon.
Another interesting factoid from this study (yes we read the whole
thing) is that the average office worker uses 10,000 pieces of copy paper
annually. This number seems absurdly
high to us: assuming you work 50 weeks per year (at five days per week) that
comes out to 40 sheets of paper per day.
Have any of you out there ever used this much paper? If so, what kind of work were you doing?