Are We As a Nation Getting Recycling Fatigue?

Despite our best intentions and a natural inclination in most ordinary people to be responsible with domestic refuse, a new phenomenon may be setting in wholly at odds with these aspirations. And it may be less to do with lapsing into bad old habits or getting lazy than to do with a certain aversion to being lectured at by ever-so-slightly bossy environmentalists. As with most social movements, Greens seem to embrace a broad range of opinion, from gentle, tree-hugging hippies in woollen caps to hard-boiled, intelligent scientists. But there has of late been a rise in the volubility, if not the numbers, of the more militant wing of the Green movement – its Red Army Eco-Warriors.

Recycling needs to be fun and positive.

These are the people who seem convinced that the majority of human beings are decadent, debauched slobs, tossing plastic cartons and newspapers into the environment like gluttonous feudal barons slinging chicken bones over their shoulders. They’re a little shrill and intolerant, to be honest. And they’re beginning to grate.

In harsh economic downturns like the one we’re struggling to come out of presently, prophecies of doom are pervasive, from newspaper commentaries to New Age pessimism. But some of the more militant Greens have been forecasting the end of the world for a very long time. This isn’t to dismiss ecological concerns. It’s just to question whether the tactic of frightening people witless and promising Armageddon is all that effective in the long run. Even in serious predicaments, we all need to lighten up once in a while. And some Green messages sound uncannily like those fundamentalist ministers braying about hellfire and brimstone at the End of Days. Eventually, people stop listening, or get inured to the prospect of catastrophe. If it’s all too late and we’re all going to Hell in a hand basket, we might as well just enjoy what’s left of the world while we can and let the devil take the consequences.

Researchers in New Zealand recently surveyed 1000 people, questioning them about their attitude to environmental responsibility. The findings were intriguing. Whilst 97% of people reported that they were doing their bit for the environment, only a tiny 3% regarded themselves as truly committed. Most people continued to use plastic shopping bags in the face of publicity discouraging the practise, and 23% confessed to deriving a mischievously defiant thrill from doing so. They also enjoyed driving gas guzzling cars, taking long, luxurious showers, and around 70% of respondents admitted to feeling resentful for having to sort out their rubbish for recycling, although a quarter also admitted feeling rather bad when they failed to do so.

Fun and positive like this!

Readers Digest had commissioned the survey, and when they shared its results with an advertising executive he responded by insisting that ‘Green’ was now a ‘damaged brand.’ Saturation media coverage of Green warnings about impending cataclysm and ecological collapse were undoubtedly resulting not in increased public concern, but in ‘Green fatigue’. And Green fatigue easily translates into recycling fatigue.

The survey found that men were generally more sceptical about Green claims than women, but one female respondent made a highly pertinent comment. She was progressively turned off by the Green message, she explained, because she disliked being made to feel guilty for trying to make her life easier.

This survey was conducted in New Zealand, but there is little reason to suppose that significantly different results would be found in the UK. And the UK’s Institute of Public Policy Research has confirmed this. They found in a study conducted earlier in 2009 that many people expressed a weariness and fatigue about the issue of climate change. More disturbingly for the Greens, many people also found those who engage in environmentally-friendly behaviours ‘smug and self-righteous.’

A message of relentless pessimism, even if delivered by earnest celebrities, tends to make people feel powerless and fatalistic, even though for the most part they begin from a position of concern and responsibility. As an advertising strategy, Green campaigning has become a bit of a disaster, producing precisely the opposite effect amongst too many people to the one it was aiming for. Blaming people for being lazy and greedy when they are working extremely hard to keep their families afloat and just want to make life as easy as possible wherever they can is a slightly sour-faced marketing strategy. It’s as if militant greens have lost (or never developed) a sense of humour, and think that getting a message across involves megaphones and finger-wagging. Schoolmarmish admonishment is, however, a distinctly unappealing form of appeal.

Can’t beat novelty-croissant marketing.

Successful messages tend to inspire, and if you can get people laughing while you’re doing the inspiring, so much the better. Politicians find it hard to resist negative campaigning, especially when major elections are afoot, but it does seem to turn a lot of potential supporters away; and if Greens are right, they can’t afford to do this.

To get us cheerfully recycling, to bring us on board more fulsomely, the more puritanical and austere Greens might begin by discarding that ecological lemon they’ve been sucking all these years. A smile is more appealing than a scowl, supporting people for their efforts more productive than scolding them for their shortcomings.

Unless the more zealous eco-warriors are willing to shift gear, or, perhaps more aptly, switch strategic climates, more and more ordinary people are likely to develop recycling fatigue in particular, and environmental fatigue more generally. Governments might also encourage hope by investing more fulsomely in cleaner, renewable fuels – a move which might say to the rest of us ‘Yes, make your lives more comfortable – we’ll keep the atmosphere clean!’ This seems to be a more optimistic strategy than braying interminably about apocalypse or sermonising about public ‘apathy’. Apathy is usually more complicated than the commentariat suggests it is; it owes more to feeling unpersuaded, unconvinced, than to bovine comfort-seeking or self-interest.

Wanted: a humorous, good-hearted, optimistic Green campaign, which engenders hope and solidarity. The days of ‘We’re all doomed!’ are spent; this message makes you want to drive to Cornwall in your 4×4 rather than take your bottles to the bottle bank.

Related News