The Importance of Setting a (Green) Example

Sometimes I wonder whether all the hassle I put myself and my family through is really worth it. After all, in the flood of garbage what is another take-out container? Does it really make sense to hoard plastic cutlery that somehow always seems to find it’s way into the house so my son can take it to school for eating lunch and then bring it back to be washed and reused?

Well, I wonder no more and here is why:

I write for work and I am very lucky that I have a boss who thinks exactly like me, he wants me to write about interesting stuff, not flack pieces about how great the product is (although it is). How, you might wonder, is this all relevant to the topic at hand? It is, bear with me for a bit.

The Power of Peer Influence

The other day I decided that I was going to write a blog about the power of peer recommendations and peer influence. You know me by now, that meant digging into the academic publications rather than just listing a bunch of anecdotes. After all, part of the fun is to actually learn something about the topic that goes deeper than “recommendations are important, we all read them obsessively on Yelp and Amazon”.

After a lot of time spent reading irrelevant or uninspiring stuff online I finally found a really interesting publication that described a number of experiments that convinced me that , firstly, I finally had enough to write an interesting blog for my company and - secondly and more importantly in the big scheme of things - that I absolutely need to keep doing what I am doing with the take-out containers, the cutlery, the second-hand clothing and the FabMo samples turned into produce bags.

Here is one of the experiments: the authors observed a street musician and counted how many people dropped money into his jar. They did this for some time to establish a baseline. Then, like the good scientists they are, they changed one variable only: as a person approached the street musician one of their colleagues (I bet they made a student do this, but that’s beside the point) played the role of just another passerby and started rummaging through his pockets as if in search for change. Guess what happened!

Yes, more people gave money: not twice as many, not three times as many - eight times as many people all of a sudden decided that the musician deserved some money. While that’s interesting the real kicker is that, when stopped and asked afterward why they just gave to the musician, people had a lot of explanations: they felt sorry for him, happened to have some spare change, felt charitable - and the list goes on but nobody said: “I saw this guy dig for money and thought, hey, that’s a great idea, I’ll give some, too!”

Saving Energy Because Others Do It

One more, I think these stories are fascinating. This one takes place in an unnamed Californian mid-sized town. Households were sent one of four flyers urging residents to conserve energy. Each flyer listed a different reason to conserve energy, namely: 1) helps the environment, 2) benefits society, 3) saves them money, and 4) is common in their neighborhood.

By now, you’ll probably think that reason number 4 had the most impact. And you would be right, households who received flyer 4 saved the most. But the story doesn’t end here: the researchers interviewed people afterwards and asked them which of the 4 reasons they believe would have the most impact on the behavior of people. Reason number 4 came in dead last.

So the lesson is easy: people take their clues from their peers and do what others do but they can be completely unaware of that fact and end up attributing their change in behavior to all sorts of other reasons. So while I believe that it is super important for each of us not to create extra waste with plastic straws, styrofoam containers etc. another really important reason to do it is to set an example that people will follow mostly unknowingly.

Many people engaging in even small acts of waste reduction, recycling and upcycling will add up and the behavior will spread ever faster - hopefully eventually turning into a global movement.

A girl can dream!

Those who want to read the actual publication, can find it here.