The Trials of Improved Practices (TIPs) approach permits very rapid formative research for policy formation and social and behavior change programming. TIPs’ roots lie in ethnography and commercial marketing. It is initiated after qualitative, often ethnographic, formative research and is based on those research results. TIPs focuses on behavior and what people can and are willing to do; in this case, to support an improved solid waste management (SWM) system. Through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Clean Cities, Blue Ocean (CCBO) program, we conducted TIPs in Samaná Province, Dominican Republic, after completing a qualitative study of households and waste. We followed the TIPs sample as members tried out their chosen new behaviors, for example, waste segregation, over the course of a week. Most people felt empowered through segregating waste, perhaps because the qualitative study revealed that most residents felt dispirited and hopeless about the waste in their environment.

We conducted a formative research study on the peninsula of Samaná, in the northeast corner of the Dominican Republic, focused on how people viewed, categorized, and handled solid waste. With the passage of a new law, a motivated government administration is now addressing the solid waste crisis on the peninsula. Here, we examine some of the pre-existing attitudes about the solid waste of Samaná residents. Results from the study reveal that, contrary to many assumptions, local Dominicans are aware of the waste crisis and, in fact, are often depressed and anxious over it, even as they feel angry and helpless about how to resolve it. On closer examination and drawing on Appadurai’s theoretical framework of “-scapes,” we can understand that the waste crisis is not a local problem, and, as such, sustainable solutions need to include a broader effort to control plastic entering the environment.