Recycling and Food Waste
I help councils, waste providers, and housing organisations drive positive behaviour change — increasing food waste and recycling rates while saving money.
For example, I supported the London Borough of Wandsworth with their communications, focus groups, surveys, and behavioural interventions around food waste and recycling. This helped them increase recycling rates by 6% in six months and save £1.2 million in ten months.
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Positive change, saving money and measuring impact
I work with you over 6 to 8 weeks, running through my four-step behavioural framework – Behaviour, Examine, Solve and Test – to drive change and deliver measurable savings.
1) Behaviour – define the challenge
I start by understanding the real context of your challenge. What are the actual problems you face? What do your insights and data reveal — from your waste composition analysis to existing surveys or focus groups?
This process is always collaborative, working with you through workshops, one-to-one interviews and co-creation sessions to achieve change.
I can also help you carry out new research – including surveys and focus groups – to identify a long list of possible behaviours. From there, I help you prioritise which specific behavioural objectives to target.
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2) Examine – identify drivers and barriers
Next, we explore who needs to do what, when, and where, and what influences their behaviour.
I map behaviours against key factors such as motivation, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and habits to understand what drives or hinders action.
For example:
- Residents may not know what belongs in each bin (knowledge barrier).
- They may find recycling or food waste bins inconveniently located (environmental barrier).
- They may not believe their efforts make a difference (motivation).
This helps identify the real barriers that need to be addressed.
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3) Solve – design the solutions
I then co-create solutions with you through a collaborative workshop. Together, we map interventions against the barriers, identifying easy-to-move versus harder-to-move behaviours.
This helps you identify where small-scale trials may be appropriate to test ideas (for example, on one estate or a few streets) before wider rollout.
I also work closely with trusted campaign specialists like CAN, who can help design and deliver creative campaigns — from graphics and posters to videos — to discover what truly drives action.
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4) Test – evaluate what works
Finally, I help you develop a robust measurement framework to track and evaluate what works, and importantly, what doesn’t.
This ensures your interventions are evidence-based, cost-effective, and deliver measurable behaviour change. Working with CAN, we can also provide a live dashboard that tracks communications and service improvements together in real time.
To find out how I can help you drive change, book a FREE planning call with me, and I’ll talk you through all four steps and how this can help you to increase recycling and food waste collection rates.
Dominic Ridley-Moy FCIPR, Chart.PR, Dip CIPR
Behaviour Change Network founder
