Workplace Pride: a voluntary initiative to reduce solid waste

Abstract

The current Government's approach to waste reduction is to support territorial authorities in promoting voluntary programmes to encourage businesses to reduce waste. This approach is based on the premise that showing people how to reduce waste will result in waste reduction. Workplace Pride, the Wellington City Council's programme, is an example of such an approach, which began by targeting the food service industry in Wellington. Wellington City Council is also gradually raising the cost of disposal to Council-owned landfills to compliment the programme and ensure that waste producers pay the full economic costs of waste disposal. This paper explores the success of Workplace Pride as a voluntary initiative to reduce waste. It presents the results of a survey of 28 businesses in the food service industry. The aims of the research were to determine whether members of the industry were aware of, and participating in the programme; whether any characteristics distinguished participants from non-participants; and whether the programme was effective in promoting waste reduction to this business sector. Results suggest that knowledge of the programme among food service businesses is poor; that few are currently participating; and that although those who are participating have generally reduced their waste to a greater degree than those who are not participating, this group was already making changes to reduce their waste before joining the programme. To date, the diffusion of the Workplace Pride Programme to the food service industry has been largely unsuccessful. To improve the programme in future, the Council must recognise that small and medium sized businesses are not responding to the programme as well as large businesses, due to time, money and staff constraints. This may indicate that a voluntary approach to waste reduction is an insufficient incentive for many businesses to change, unless more resources are put into helping businesses overcome these constraints. A greater use of economic instruments and regulation should be used to enforce the message that excessive waste imposes costs on the environment and the community which are not dealt with by the market mechanism. More transparent economic signals to those generating waste may result in more effective reduction than voluntary initiatives backed by education programmes.