Singapore has a high level of affordances, which are available options to enable behavior, in the forms of readily available E-waste recycling bins are readily available island-wide. However, even with the most large-scale community E-Waste collection program in Singapore only managed to collect about 22,000kg of E-Waste in 2015 (Tai, 2015), which is less than 0.0003% of all E-waste produced in Singapore annually.
As such, it is important to decrease both external and internal barriers to E-waste recycling. It is possible to use Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) to encourage a higher rate of E-waste recycling.
The 4 steps of CBSM are (McKenzie-Mohr, 2013):
1. Identifying barriers and benefits
- There is a low level of commitment from Singaporeans, with no incentives to engage in recycling and poor social norms. A barrier to recycling is convenience. It is far easier to throw an old electronic product down the trash chute. There are additional inconveniences to call for collection, or specially make one’s way down to put E-waste into the designated bins. There are also no social norms or peer-perceived endorsement regarding E-waste recycling.
- Interaction with the people to better understand barriers to E-waste recycling can also be done via questionnaires, conversations, or detailed interviews.
2. Develop strategy:
- A few ways are to improve on:
- Getting people to make verbal or written commitment to recycle their E-waste.
- Paste prompts next to rubbish chutes as that will make the prompt close in space and time.
- Appoint block leaders to prompt and encourage behaviour.
- Instill norms of behaviour when deciding how to discard old electronics.
- Effective communication to Singaporeans about the E-waste problem, and solutions they can engage in.
Take a look at Japan’s strategy in encouraging more E-waste recycling:
(Playground, 2017)
They effectively communicated their program to a large number of citizens, provided intrinsic incentives to recycle old electronics, instilled norms of recycling behaviour and had many prompts to remind and encourage people.
3. Implementation
- This is the phase of rolling out and allowing people to participate in the program.
4. Evaluation:
- There needs to be continual monitoring and evaluation of results. This allows for refinement of the program to make it more targeted and effective.