Abstract:

In my research on waste sorting signage, I am often met with the question: “Why am I (an imperfect human actor) tasked with sorting waste? Why not use perfectly capable machines”? And while waste sorting machines are getting better by the day, I have a hunch that there might be more to waste sorting than pure resource extraction. I hypothesize that the more waste fractions we sort our waste into, the better we are at estimating the distribution of the sorted waste. I.e., how much was plastic, how much was paper, how much was metal, etc. If so, waste sorting might hold a latent potential to increase awareness of personal consumption patterns and function as a softly regulating behavioural public policy intervention. At the upcoming seminar, I will present results from a recent study attempting to find such effect as well as potential explanations and the design for a future study. This is all work in progress and the results are not yet super robust, so I look much forward to all your valuable suggestions and input for what might constitute the basis for the last chapter of my thesis.