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In this study we report on a doorstepping intervention which produced a 12.5%, statistically significant,increase in the recycling capture rate. More importantly, we investigate why doorstepping caused theincrease, through focus groups, structured interviews and questionnaires. By analyzing the findings withrespect to a pragmatic set of eleven clusters of determinants of behaviour change, we find that socialnorms and emotion were important, with prompts as a more minor determinant. We can now planfurther doorstepping knowing an emphasis on these is useful. Knowledge, skills, belief of consequences,belief of capability, action planning, role clarification, feedback, and motivation were determinant clusters found not to be important in this case.\ud \ud Recycling behaviour change interventions often do not generally produce transferable learning becausethey are usually presented as case studies and not broken down into key elements. Our analytica lapproach of breaking down a poorly defined activity - doorstepping - into elements which influencedifferent clusters of determinants, and then exploring their separate impacts, allows some predictiveplanning and optimization for other interventions. The specific context here was residential food wasterecycling in apartment blocks of communities in Shanghai, China

Minimisation of municipal solid waste and diversion from landfill are necessary for the UK to manage waste sustainably and achieve legislative compliance. A survey of householder attitudes and experiences of a trial for minimising household food waste from waste collection in the county of West Sussex, UK is described. The minimisation method used the Green Cone food digester, designed for garden installation. A postal questionnaire was distributed to 1,000 householders who had bought a cone during the trial and a total of 433 responses were received. The main reason for people buying the Green Cone had been concerns about waste (88%), with 78% and 67% of respondents respectively claiming to have participated in recycling and home composting in the last 30 days. The waste material most frequently put in the digester was cooked food (91%), followed by fruit waste, vegetable matter and bones/ meat. Some respondents were using it for garden and animal waste from pets. Most users found the Green Cone performed satisfactorily. Approximately 60% of respondents had seen a reduction of 25-50% in the amount of waste they normally put out for collection, with analysis showing reported levels of reduction to be significant (p < 0.05). Additional weight surveys by householders recorded an average of 2.7 kg/hh/wk diverted to the food digester.

Local authorities in the UK have been set challenging new targets for recycling household waste for 2005. This means many of them are urgently trying to determine which parameters in kerbside schemes are most important for increasing recycling rates. In this work information from previous kerbside schemes is used to plan significant improvements in an existing scheme in Horsham District, UK, and trialled using 1,000 homes including a control group. It used fortnightly collection of residual waste with sets of recyclables collected on alternate weeks. The new scheme resulted in improvements of participation rates from 72% to 84%, and set-out rates of 45% to 59% (falling to 76% and 50% respectively some months later). Details on participation and set-out for different groups of materials is given, as well as levels of excess waste and participation in the collection of garden waste.

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