Habits. It's all about habits.

I’m going to get all scientific on you about habits.

To be clear I am no scientist, but am regurgitating (and paraphrasing!) the great work of others. Behavioural theory pertaining to habits, dished up to us by the likes of Charles Duhigg and James Clear, suggests that habits form–or break–in relation to a feedback loop that rewards good shit and dishes out negative feelings for bad shit.

Do good shit >> get good stuff >> do it again; do bad shit >> feel pain >> don’t do it again. Yeah - so, paraphrasing.

Based on the slow uptake of better systems, I have therefore drawn the conclusion that if 99% of us continue our (bad) habits around using single-use packaging (SUP) when we order takeouts, we are being rewarded for it with convenience, and so we do it again. At a bare minimum, we are not being penalised for it. There is no pain.?

Ergo, we (society) need to create a feedback loop that throws crap at us (personally) when we use SUP. We need to engineer for people to feel some (more) pain at a personal level because clearly the pain that we all experience at societal and environmental levels is just too abstract and too far removed to impact our feedback loop for most people.?

Maybe then something in our lizard brains will pipe up and say, “Hey, let’s not do that again, moron! Let’s do something that is less painful for me personally at this moment, and incidentally might just sort out the world’s problems and the future of my grandchildren’s ability to live a happy and fulfilling life for decades to come.” Or something like that.

Legislation can do this. A solid product stewardship scheme will knock up the prices of SUP for vendors, creating pain, and they will pass that on to consumers. This will level the playing field and make the pain of having to return our containers less than the pain of having to pay lots for the privilege of throwing a SUP container out.

But we can’t wait for legislation.?

In positive news, we see many really successful and impactful applications of returnable packaging amongst those who offer it. What is their magic sauce?

These vendors are totally owning this reuse packaging space, and they are creating more pain for their customers.? At best, they remove the convenience of SUP entirely; or with slightly less commitment (although still commendable), they increase the cost of SUP. The vendor's vision and ownership of the problem, combined with great communication and enthusiasm at the counter when they are interacting with their customers, eases this ‘pain’ for their customers and rewards them for feeling good about being a part of the solution. The results speak for themselves. About 80% of Again Again's impact comes from 20% of the network who are doing this. It works.

For many vendors, however, even the idea of making things more painful for their customers is untenable as this may result in lost coffee/food sales. In fact, what we see is that the care and attention that goes alongside these actions actually creates loyalty and connection to customers with greater repeat sales.

In 2023, I am setting Again Again’s job to be this:

• Help consumers to understand the reduction of societal waste as a win and benefit personally, such that this can nudge their habits. This need to happen at the point they are choosing packaging with their purcahses.
• Work primarily with vendors who will take their own place in this behaviour change journey. Working with vendors who make returnable packaging available, but don’t really champion it, doesn’t move the dial.?
• Keep problem-solving so that our solution gets more and more convenient, and less (operationally) painful when compared to SUP. Point-of-sale integration is key here. And, can we do this without customers needing an app on their phones? That’s a big question.
• Nut out the return issue. It needs to be de-peopled.

This is quite the journey. In my next musings... Is it Again Again’s place to drive behaviour change, or is it civil societies'? Is there a more productive place for Again Again to focus our pretty small influence? How, and with whom, can we collaborate to amplify our impact?

Look out. Change is coming. Follow along.