Keep Britain Tidy has binned its ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ messaging with a new-look waste hierarchy.
The new guidance has been designed to help industry communicate the key messages surrounding waste prevention as it accelerates the UK’s transition to a circular economy.
Fresh guidance – which has been developed using user-tested research insights – emphasises the importance of mindful consumption and has been shown to better educate the public about waste prevention.
The new-look waste hierarchy follows research from Keep Britain Tidy which highlighted confusion surrounding the commonly-used terms ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’, with almost a third of people (30%) feeling the terms are interchangeable.
The data showed the public still largely defaults to recycling and is failing to understand that it is actually the third best option, with Keep Britain Tidy previously referring to it as the “last resort”.
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The new hierarchy features logically grouped levels, with more detailed descriptors than the catchall ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ terms and is highly visual, with images and symbols suggesting the types of items and behaviours to consider.
After seeing the new hierarchy, 71% of research participants said it was clear what it was asking them to do. More than half (58%) recognised better ways to minimise their environmental footprint beyond recycling and 51% felt more motivated to protect the planet.
Keep Britain Tidy chief executive Allison Ogden-Newton said: “We have made a lot of progress by emphasising the recycling part of the waste hierarchy. But we can’t just recycle our way out of the climate emergency; we urgently need to shift mindsets and make reuse and consumption reduction a social norm.
“Embracing better, insight-led communications like this new waste hierarchy is an essential piece of the puzzle as it will have a significant bearing on how widely adopted reduce and reuse behaviour become.
“We urge practitioners across the industry to follow our new guidance and, vitally, to come together to tackle the issue.”
