Changing Aurovilians' behaviour

Auroville Today: What is social marketing?

Min: Today, marketing is a very sophisticated science, drawing on the latest developments in psychology to sell products and services. The term ‘social marketing’ was coined in the 1970s and its primary purpose is not commercial gain but to achieve a particular social good through effecting behaviour change. To achieve this, it uses many of the same approaches and techniques as are used for conventional marketing. Designer Dan Lockton summarized some of the main approaches as ‘enabling the desired behaviour by making it easier than the alternatives; motivating the behaviour using education, incentives, and attitude change; and making alternatives to the desired behaviour more difficult or impossible’.

There are four different kinds of interventions we can use to change behaviour - ‘hugs’, ‘smacks’, ‘nudges’ and ‘shoves’. Actually all of these are already applied in Auroville. For example, a ‘hug’ is when we praise somebody in News and Notes for doing something of positive value; a ‘smack’ is when, say, someone is banned from Auronet for contravening the guidelines; a ‘shove’ is when no disposable carry bags are available at the Pour Tous Distribution Centre; and the fact that most eateries and grocery shops in Auroville promote vegetarian food ‘nudges’ people to adopt new, more positive dietary routines.

One important thing to remember when applying these interventions is that they have to be adapted to the local situation: one size won’t fit all. For example, regarding waste management in Auroville, where the consciousness of waste is quite advanced, the solutions we apply here are very different from the ones we would apply in, for example, Chennai.

You chose to focus initially on waste management in Auroville. Why?

Actually, originally we thought of taking up other areas, like healthcare and food. We know that our diet affects our health, and poor health can be a financial burden on the community. But when you look at our eateries, while some are already preparing very healthy food, they still don’t quite make that connection. So the idea was to create an approach where, for example, we would make it more difficult for people to buy things like ice cream.

We also thought of mobility and finding ways to make our roads quieter and safer. Yet another idea was to use social marketing to get everybody to actively contribute in some way to Auroville, for at the moment we have a large number of people who are not engaged with the collective.

In the end we felt all these were too ambitious. We decided to focus on waste because there's already a lot of awareness about this in Auroville and a lot of us are already involved directly or indirectly in waste management.

Initially you did some research. What were the most important findings?

One of them was that Aurovilians’ attitude to waste has primarily to do with aesthetics. They like pleasant environments and waste comes in the way, and that’s why they are so strong on eliminating it. But we are not all very conscious about recycling, reprocessing and reusing and there is a tendency that if waste is out of sight, it is also out of mind. We don’t think about it in a ‘joined-up’ way.

Our research also revealed that in terms of waste management there is a lot of variation between communities. The Creativity community, for example, has expended a lot of community energy on waste. They have a waste disposal system which is very advanced, and when the waste is taken out by the ammas, community members take turns to ensure that the waste is put in the right bins.

In Certitude, the level of consciousness of waste is high, as is segregation at household level, but we found that the community collection place was a dumpsite. The waste was mixed, there were broken bottles littered around and dogs were pulling out garbage. When we told one of the long-term residents about this, he was amazed. He said he had never visited the collection site. He felt he had done his job by segregating waste in his house.

What interventions did you recommend regarding waste management in Auroville?

One is that in our community, Maitreye, we try not to allow the ammas to throw the waste in the community bins. When you take out your own waste, two things happen. Firstly, because of your level of education, you tend to put it in the right bin. Secondly, when you look at some of your waste you may think, ‘Why did I buy this?’

Another thing that came out very clearly from our research was that while there are many sustainable and aesthetic features in the new communities and apartment blocks that recently came up, the provision made for waste management was inadequate when our survey was done. This is shocking. It doesn’t cost much to allocate a covered space and buy some barrels; it’s just a matter of thinking about it. So we recommend that a waste area with barrels should be a mandatory aspect of the design of every community, something which has to be incorporated to get planning permission. However, so far our planners are still reflecting on this.

Another ‘nudge’ intervention is to try to get people to wash and dry plastic waste before putting it in the bin. The reasoning behind this is that when plastic waste is used for food, if the plastic is not cleaned well the food starts to rot very quickly and it becomes very unpleasant for the Ecoservice people to handle. Consequently, most of this waste goes straight to the landfill rather than being recycled. So we printed out ‘wash and dry’ labels and distributed them at PTDC and in different communities.

We also gave information at PTDC about the packaging of products which would go straight to the landfill. We made little signs which were put below the ‘guilty’ items to indicate this, but this didn’t work because the products are moved around so much on the shelves that the staff couldn’t keep up with changing the position of the signs.

We also employed ‘nudges’ at PTDC. For example, we re-shelved some of the products based on their packaging. Certain biscuit packaging is difficult to recycle because it is multi-layer wrapping, so we put these biscuits on the bottom shelf, while at eye level we put products which use less packaging, are made in Auroville and are healthier. Our next task is to talk to those Aurovilians who are packaging tea and coffee with wasteful aluminum foil. We want them to put their products in more Eco-friendly bags. They may lose a little bit of fragrance but if they are packed in smaller quantities, they will be consumed very quickly and there will be little loss.

We also worked with Sadhana Forest to make it into a zero-waste community. We designed a system where you can only bring your waste at a certain time to the community waste manager at the waste hut. Here you empty your bin onto a table in front of the recycling hut coordinator and you go through the waste items with him/her in terms of what you have been consuming.

We also considered using this ‘smack’ on Auroville as a whole. PhD student Rajamani collected waste data by community, we know how many bags of waste are collected from each community and how many of these are not segregated, so every month in the News and Notes we could ‘name and shame’ some of the worst communities. If people are too sensitive about shaming people, we could at least ‘hug’ the best communities by naming them and explaining why they are doing so well. Then others can copy them.

The next level would be to weigh the waste and then calculate the per capita waste in Auroville.

Have you done any research to determine if these interventions are having any effect?

It is very difficult to determine, but I think we need to work harder to get information on this.

There is no doubt that, unlike conventional marketing people, your intention is to promote the wider good of the community through these interventions. But some people would say this approach is essentially manipulation and, therefore, unethical. How do you respond to this?

I think this is naïve. We are all being manipulated all the time. Every time we go to a supermarket in Pondicherry or look at a billboard on the ECR or watch an advertisement on TV, we are being manipulated. More positively, we do it ourselves when we design our schools, for example, to promote certain kinds of interactions.

But some Aurovilians would reply we are here for consciousness development. Therefore, we should be making decisions from the point of view of a higher consciousness.

I absolutely agree. But I see all the interventions I have mentioned as being little props to build that consciousness.

But are we not again talking about a group making top-down decisions for the rest of Auroville?

This is a very difficult one. We have chosen to collaborate or ‘conspire with’ those Aurovilians who are people of action, who feel very strongly about something and are trying to manifest the Charter in their own way. We may not always agree with them completely, but we want to support their efforts because we see that they are trying to do something for the good of the larger community.

In terms of deciding which interventions to make, what is your reference point?

One standpoint, of course, is the Auroville Charter, but this is rather vague. However, if you look at a place like PTDC the reference point is very clear. They want it to be a place where people get essential things; it is not a shop where you buy consumeristic products. So when we make an intervention there we take that as a given. The Eco Services main thrust is not to burden the rest of the world with our waste. The moment we are putting our waste in a landfill we are running against this value, so the whole objective of Ecoservice is to avoid throwing anything into a landfill. All our interventions there are intended to support this.

What is your next project in Auroville?

We are looking at changing behaviour regarding sanitary pads. Nappies and sanitary pads are a very large component of our waste. We don’t realize that they are medical waste, so they cannot be recycled but must be incinerated. However, it has to be incinerated at a high temperature and these facilities are not always locally available in India. Consequently, all this waste goes to landfill and, if it is not lined, it can pollute the soil and water table. So if we can change behaviour to cut down on this waste, like getting people to use reusable pads like those produced by Ecofemme, we can make an important difference. This is more than a local issue, it is also a national one, a global one, and Auroville could be taking the lead here.

For more information about the work and other initiatives taken by this team, which is promoting sustainable development through transdisciplinary research and action, visit earthandus.org (http://earthandus.org)