Interesting NY Times Article

Any thoughts on why people are less likely to recycle & turn off lights @ work?

It's not my plantation ...

Hi Peter,

Any thoughts on why people are less likely to recycle & turn off lights @ work? The foremost reason, in respect of leaving lights on, is because (as Peter hints) someone else is paying the bill. One of the arguments I hear myself using frequently in discussions on these issues at work is: "You wouldn't leave them on like this at home ...", meaning "when You have to pay for what you use". (Somewhat similarly, most people do not go out and buy handfuls of pens for use at home; they don't need to, because pens somehow migrate there from the place where they are supplied for free.) Most people are still fixated on monetary prices as the beacons of behaviour, and the same is true of recycling items in the workplace: ownership by the corporation, the faceless "Them", is something taken for granted, and habits (like throwing away blank pages of pager simply because the printer spewed them out by mistake) have not only been deeply ingrained since the days of environmental unawareness but are actively encouraged by so much affluence of resources in a well-founded laboratory or a well-equipped office. I have also observed what can only be described as "grievance behaviour": the owner of the organization where I work is the Canadian Government, and one janitor/clearer who used to be employed would (surely deliberately) switch on and leave on all the outside lights to some of the buildings. That behaviour seemed to say two things: "I'm getting my own back on the Government" and "The Government is the ultimate owner of everything Canadian, so I can use its resources as I please". Both reflect that it is the monetary cost of the commodity rather than its environmental resource value that motivates many of our reflex actions. And if our reflex actions do not have Environmental considerations at their root, we have a long, long, long way to go before we automatically let environmental considerations dominate. That there is such a clear dichotomy of home/work behaviour is thus both serious and worrying. The issue that has been raised is surely a key litmus test of how commited anyone really is to environmental matters.

Elizabeth Griffin
(Victoria, Canada)

Peter,

My gut feeling is that people aren't acting environmentally at work because of the "it's the not-my-job" syndrome. I don't mean to imply that office workers are shirkers but implementing even simple environmental behaviors in the workplace needs someone to to take the lead and help coordinate them (barrier). For example: who exactly is going to be responsible for making sure the recyclables get to the recycling drop? And who is tasked with turning off the lights at night? Who is going to start the culture of "last one out turn out the lights" Do people know where the light switches are? Are the ones that need to be kept on for security or the cleaning crew clearly marked? Inthe offices I am aware of, that position is usually a quasi-volunteer one. Someone wants to do it and Management won't squawk if they take off early to empty the recycling but it's not part of the job description. Of course the danger of trying to make responsibile environmental behavior corporate policy is that you can come up with policies that are positively Dilbert-esque. Given that many people are already primed to act environmentally, a light touch is needed.

Anne

Anne Lewis
319 Information & Education
Project Administrator
SD Project WET
SD Leopold Education Project
SD Discovery Center
805 W Sioux Ave. Pierre, SD 57501
605-224-8295
http://www.sd-discovery.com

I'm not sure there is a universal approach that can be accepted here carte blanche. I think that there is a cultural determinism element that depends on how the social contract is accepted in general. What you allude to here is true in many ways of Anglo-American culture, but applies hardly (I believe) to other cultural frames. Such generalized frame application in a multi-cultural environment may work through fiats like "Well, this is America, so get used to it" - which may be the Dilbertesque that is warned about here. But I believe it's a universal (regardless of culture) that it is ultimately management that establishes and enforces any internal business policy (as it is government that chooses whether to fund or not to fund a program). The procedural implementation of a policy is, thus, key. So when I wrote earlier employees leave "because it's not their plantation" I mean (less cynically articulated) they leave because they have neither a stake in the organization nor a frame to relate to the organization. The more lofty goal of "do it just because it's good for the environment" calls the employee to task for not being a revolutionary on the job - and, frankly, I'm not sure that is the metalanguage the environmental movement wants to continue to carry; especially given that "green thinking" is now part of "mainstream thinking". So rather than questioning what employees can do, I think the question really is how the frame of thinking on business operations should be modified to comport to or assimilate new understandings on recycling and green living ...

I'm sure Elizabeth is right, and people are more ready to waste somebody else's money at work than their own at home. However, I wonder if it also has to do with social norms, i.e., it is seen as normal (and desirable) to turn one's lights off at home. This possibly because of all those hours that your mother and father spent saying as a child, "Turn the lights off!" Whereas, at work, very few people actually actively tell each other, "Hey, switch the light off" and so there is no strong social norm prescribing the behaviour. To give an example, I work at an environmental NGO and at my work it is definitely NOT normative to leave lights or computers on. We switch them off when we go home and if somebody leaves their computer on then they often get named and shamed on the staff email list. However (sadly) we still don't have a norm around printing out paper and not collecting it from the printer. So, quite often, when you go into the printing room at my work it is filled with wasted paper that people printed out and obviously couldn't be bothered to collect. This is obviously not due to a lack of environmental concern on the part of the staff - instead I think it is because we don't have a strong enough social norm which labels such behaviour unacceptable.

I'm reminded from an article in USA Today in which Doug M-M is quoted. There are no children watching Mom and Dad at work. The expectations of the social group, especially of children, are very powerful in modifying behaviour.

Norm Ruttan

iWasteNot Systems
www.iwastenotsystems.com
1-800-630-7864

Could you please pass on this reference?

Melissa Hellwig

My experience as a management consultant is that corporations approach these issues culturally, through bulletins and emails and posters and on the company's intranet. This kind of social marketing is entirely appropriate in the community, but most workplaces are naturally managerial hierarchies. There is no issue of persuading or of shaming because employees agree to follow the rules and to do their jobs. (That's what they've agreed to give in exchange for receiving a salary. If a company is serious about an issue like energy conservation or recycling, it builds it into role descriptions and policy and managers hold subordinates accountable for doing their jobs (e.g. "Part of your job is to turn the lights out in your area when you leave") and for following policy ("All used paper will be put in appropriate recycling bins").

Herb Koplowitz, Ph.D.
Terra Firma Management Consulting
Tel: 416-324-9240
Fax: 416-972-1354
email: [email protected]
307 Ontario Street
Toronto, Ontario M5A 2V8 Canada

I agree with Herb. The social marketing approach, while having some applicability to organisations, needs to be complemented by a deeper approach to culture change. An employee group is a more captive (metaphorically of course!) audience than a community, so the ability to get in front of them and get them really thinking about sustainability and their personal responsibility towards it is a lot greater. I've found the discussion about why we act differently at work to be very interesting. One theory I have is that workplaces have evolved over the years to be places where we leave our real selves at the door, and become rational economic units. Although this bleak view can be challenged in many organisations, it is still the norm in the majority. Maybe one of the humanistic values we get used to leaving at the door is our concern for the planet?

Tim Cotter

AWAKE
56 Bloomfield Rd,
Ascot Vale,
Melbourne, VIC 3032, Australia
Tel: (+61 3) 9370 0273
Mobile: (+61 3) 0404 212 903
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.awake.com.au

The notion of culture change caused me to think of research on alcohol use among employees. It seems that corporate culture regarding alcohol use plays a very large role in levels of alcohol use (and problems) among employees. Even their at home consumption patterns are affected. One might think that if employers are persuaded to go green (if only from narrow economic interests related to reduced energy costs etc) they could moderate the corporate culture with the result that employees might become even more "green" at work than off. (I use "corporate culture" to refer to the workplace norms even among mom and pop sized businesses)

The point I was trying to make is that when managers do their jobs (however often or rarely that might be), employees do not have to be persuaded; they are held to account for following policy. Unlike the neighbourhood or community, the workplace is not a democracy. If a company's CEO or owner is serious about sustainable behaviour, they will enable employees to act in more environmentally friendly ways, explicitly lay out required behaviour and hold employees accountable for following policy. The good news from what you're saying, Mel, is that the resulting behaviour in the workplace will be taken home and practiced there as well.

Herb Koplowitz, Ph.D.

Good point Tim,

This is especially true in the public service where up till now we have been required to leave our values at the door. On the bright side this is shifting now, especially when it comes to the environment.

Hi All - My experience as a former (thank god!) corporate employee is somewhat different from what Herb describes. While it's true that employees compromise a variety of intellectual, emotional and physical body parts when they cross a corporate threshold (including, in the U.S., their constitutional rights), we workers are not quite so pliable he implies. As long as our labor is either skilled or well-organized (granted that this is hardly always the case), employers are constrained by our availability and cannot easily let us go for less than serious infractions. When I was working at Sun Microsystems, the administration estimated that it cost around $300,000 to replace a moderately skilled computer worker because of the time and learning curve involved to come up to speed. If a corporate culture is well done it can elicit a good deal of cooperation, especially for perceived social benefit. But if employees don't want to participate in activities peripheral to their job descriptions, they won't, either outright or passive aggressively. But I think Tim is right - one of the things we often leave at the door is our concern for the planet and all of its living inhabitants, human and otherwise. Immediate self-interest and myopia prevail in expanded timeframes and extended distances. Now there's a social marketing challenge!

Cheers,
Adam in soon-to-be-flooded New England, USA where record snowfalls will suddenly melt

Boy, you can add university culture to the mix. It astounds me how a large majority of academics think that in order to blend with students and "be in" going to a bar and getting drunk with students is the thing to do ...

While its true that employers are certainly limited to explicit job descriptions when it comes to enforcing behavior, I think Herbs point was simply that employers can and should be integrating environmentally preferable behaviors into the job descriptions themselves. This achieves several things:

* It reinforces to the staff as a whole that the company intends and acts to create a specific corporate culture that places value on environmentally-preferable behaviors (much like a company who hosts social events during office hours engenders a culture of fun, or a company who holds weekly cross-departmental brainstorming meetings engenders a culture of collaboration);

* It builds environmentally-preferable behavior into the enforceable portions of an employees duties;

* It results in increased environmentally-preferable behavior within the workplace regardless of an employees moral stance, etc etc.

The idea is that the workplace is not a volunteer-based environment, and so the most efficient way to increase these behaviors in the workplace is for management to includes it in its list of requirements for the job (right alongside answering the phones or data entry).

Best,
Jess

Jess Sand
Principal
Roughstock Studios
PO Box 460010
San Francisco, CA 94146
p (415) 643-0121
f (415) 643-4896
http://www.roughstockstudios.com

Good point Janelle. Perhaps being green is still too connected to being an identity/moral choice/political leaning to be really examined as a rational choice.

Tim Cotter

I'm not sure, Tim that it's so undirected. Just as academicians instill in us a notion that the barroom or pub is the appropriate locale for Dionysian ideations, they also instill in us other moral guidelines which we carry with us into the "real" world of labor. In other words, I believe the real burden of change lies in the hands of the academics - professors and philosophers - to develop (and challenge) the rational, moral, ethical, and political leanings that have been inculled in our minds by media and cultural ambient environment. That challenge, well placed, can become the source of much success; because if when we graduate we enter the workforce and insist that certain conduct be taken because it is the "morally right" thing to do, then somehow change will take place. Even better if the change is fostered in business, medical, law or other professional schools. I would say more change in the direction of sustainability will come about from business schools choosing to train their students in sustainability as a cornerstone business morality (and ethics) {if not a solid bottom-line business proposition} than from anywhere else ... (indeed, I, for one, would not have found this site if it had not been for the encouragement of my public policy colleagues (and professors)) ...

Best,
Peter Manda

here are some more rambles on greening up work. Yes, employers can require staff to do these things. One issue is why would they? There are only so many things you can hold employees accountable for. Employers would tend to place things that are seen as vital to the bottom line at the top of the list of things they expect from employees. Unless the employer has some overriding personal value set that embraces "greenness" (and if the employer is a corporation not a real person that is not likely)then green behavioral expectations are only likely to become part of formal job descriptions if the employer thinks they contribute to the bottom line. And this would be more than just figuring it might cost less in energy bills to shut off the lights. It would be weighing the cost of employee time to take green actions vs doing other work, or the potential cost of investing supervisor's time monitoring green actions instead of doing other things, or the possible loss of a talented employee who just thinks going green is some sort of liberal conspiracy and does not want to recycle, but who may be the best person the company has to do a vital task. There are other issues a little harder to capture. But I will try. One is that a lot of people are idiots. They toss trash into receptacles clearly labeled with the blue circle of arrows and the word "cans" on them. Will you install security cameras to catch them doing this? The other is what I might call the "prison behavior effect." That is, the official institution may require some forms of behavior, and precisely because "the man" requires it all the cons secretly resent it and do their best to undermine it. Will forcing folks to be green at work generate (if only unconscious) resistance? Will workers comply in the work place but then overcompensate and be wasteful in their private lives just to show the boss that "nobody can tell me what to do?"

This is an excellent observation. I know of many people who rationalize wasteful practices by saying global warming is a myth, or who associate green behavior with "long haired tree huggers." Probably a lot of "good old boys" in the US believe being mindful of resources is just plain unamerican--they still believe in the endless frontier, in moving in, sucking up what's there to make money and moving on when the land is used up. They just don't get that there is no place to move to anymore.

The 'identity/moral choice/political leaning' is what makes being green so powerful and confronting. The rational bit is what other political parties will try to claim as their basis for authencity without the values, so we have to claim that quality of rationality as part of our green 'good sense'.

Jenny

There certainly is "brown" inertia everywhere one looks. And although I am not speaking for my agency's policies, it may be possible to break down the inertia through practical measures. First, a governor's executive order requiring green practices by all state agencies and institutions would be a beginning. Then, the state may require all private contractors/vendors doing business with the state to have a 'green' operating plan informed by specific parameters (or to apply for a waiver if, say, a given requirement proves impractical.) In fact, all political jurisdictions -- cities, states, conservation districts -- could use their legal authority to nudge the private sector in this direction.

Michael Bergman

Reducing Toxics and Southwest Region Environmental Educator
Washington Department of Ecology
360.407.6243
[email protected]

I once worked in an office where someone, prior to my employment, had taken to dumping recyclables out of trash cans on people's desks to illustrate the importance of recycling at work. This caused some serious resentment issues when I tried to improve recycling. I found that friendly reminder notes (praise and criticism were good once a year) I agree that no one likes big brother watching things they feel "don't matter" but we hold people accountable for what they look at on the internet and we should have policies in place to require energy, water and resource conservation. These should be given out at orientation and become part of training programs through HR departments so they are taken seriously. Well no one should be fired over failing to recycle, they should have something reflected on their annual review that states they respect business property, utilities and the corporate philosophy.

Marta Keane,

Recycling Program Specialist
Will County Land Use 
Waste Services
58 E. Clinton Street, Suite 500
Joliet, IL 60432
815-774-4343
[email protected]

Controlling internet viewing is more in tune with the culture. The US has a decided tendency to publicly porn and still is a bit ambivalent about gambling-both big internet businesses. Besides, using the net for personal entertainment means you are not devoting your time at work to actually working. When we get cultural change to the extent that trashing recyclables and wasting energy is as socially unacceptable as watching porn at work, we will have come a long way.