Stewart Kettle | 17 Sep 2024

Ever wondered what happens to your recycling after it's been picked up? You're not the only one. When we asked London citizens for ideas to encourage their neighbours to recycle food waste, they suggested providing the benefit to the community to show what happens next.

"Give out compost to show the cycle in full" (Waltham Forest resident)

Working with the Borough of Waltham Forest in London, we conducted 52 AI interviews with an existing panel of residents to gather insights and ideas on how to increase food waste recycling.

The findings reaffirmed qualitative findings the council had from earlier focus groups and surveys, which was a reassuring quality check for our work. But the team at Waltham Forest were particularly impressed with how AI interviews could 'go deeper' at speed.

"In surveys once you ask an open question people stop… [the AI interviews] get people talking" (Climate Official at Waltham Forest)

The citizen panel setup itself was excellent. More governments (both local and national) could benefit from panels like this, so they can engage with citizens both quickly and often. We believe this is a stronger model than snap-shot consultation surveys, allowing behavioural science and innovation projects to gather critical insights faster.

From the interviews we found that the majority of residents are positive about recycling, but are worried about smells, mess, and pests. There were a few residents strongly opposed to food waste recycling that we think it'd be hard to convince, and some that were recycling even before the council was picking up food waste.

Based on the responses, we've recommended that the council focuses on people neither strongly for or against food waste recycling, and to do this getting the basics right first will be the priority: frequent collections and well maintained bins. On top of this, it would be good to test out different stickers on the bins. But we think the best idea, happily recycled from our local panel, would be to share out some of that compost locally. Check out our full project report here for all the details.