SC Johnson will work with Recyclebank to increase curbside recycling in 50 towns and cities across the US, in one of two new efforts aimed at closing the gap between families’ environmental aspirations and their everyday choices.
The SC Johnson Green Choices Recycling Challenge will offer consumers incentives for recycling, and aims to contribute to the company’s goal to become landfill neutral by 2016.
The other program, The SC Johnson Sustainable Behavior Change Program, will bring together academics, environmentalists and consumers to identify what drives behavior change around a number of sustainable actions. Using consumer-action programs – the first being the Green Choices Recycling Challenge – the Change Program will test different message techniques across communities to understand what drives behavior changes, especially around recycling, and find ways to promote such behavior.
SC Johnson is teaming up in this effort with behavior-change experts Robert Cialdini, Ph.D, Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University, and Vladas Griskevicius, Ph.D., University of Minnesota McKnight Land-Grant Professor of Marketing. Insights gained will ultimately be shared with the public, SC Johnson says.
More than half of our national waste – 136 million tons – ends up in landfills across the country. The average American generates 4.4 pounds of trash a day, according to SC Johnson.
Through the initiatives and its internal operational changes SC Johnson says it will divert 480 million pounds of waste from the nation’s landfills – more than the company’s operational footprint.
In July 2011, SC Johnson launched a refill pouch for its Windex range of cleaning products aimed at reducing the waste that product produces. Consumers buying the pouch will dilute the concentrated Windex it contains and refill their existing spray trigger bottle with the solution. This cuts down on the packaging and fuel needed to transport the product. At the time of the launch SC Johnson admitted that it was fighting an uphill battle in getting consumers to buy a refill rather than the ready-to-go spray bottle.