Abstract for: No Time to Waste: Making Waste Sorting Worth the Time

Sustainable cities and communities is one of the SDGs. To reach this goal, improving material recycling through waste sorting is important for big cities. Although young people are concerned about the environment, analyses show that “millennials” (20-29 years old) perform worse on waste sorting compared to other age groups. Therefore, we have analyzed and modeled the waste sorting behavior for students in Oslo that are living in shared housing arrangements. The main objective is to find ways to improve the material recycling. Five initiatives are simulated and discussed. Our results show that citizens need to be divided into distinctive segments and influencing factors for each segment’s waste sorting behavior need to be identified. Customized communication and attractive incentives for each segment need to be offered. More specifically, Millennials seem to be influenced more by initiatives that give objective results, like discounts on bus tickets or winning prizes through competitions.