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The Litter Challenge: pupils make quick work of street litter
4
May
2020
At Colruyt Group, we like to contribute to a cleaner environment. And since ‘what’s learnt in the cradle’ still ‘lasts till the tomb’, we launch an initiative to stimulate a behaviour change in young people with non-profit organisation GoodPlanet: The Litter Challenge. It’s a free, interactive street litter project for second and third grade secondary classes.
Start nudging
The Litter Challenge took place over several sessions in the 2019-2020 academic year, facilitated by a GoodPlanet coordinator and the teacher. Workshops were run in about 200 classes. The first workshop provides the youngsters with an insight into the street litter problem and the psychological processes that influence our behaviour.
Instead of a boring theory lesson, there is interaction, a quiz, a Chihuahua song and cake. During the workshop, the behaviour of the youngsters is gently steered in the right direction by the GoodPlanet coordinator. This is how they can experience for themselves the nine psychological techniques that can be used to influence a group of people. Nudging is one example. Nudging techniques are subtle, positive suggestions that encourage us to change our behaviour, such as putting rubbish in the bin instead of on the floor.
These psychological techniques can then be used by the youngsters themselves when they are thinking up a solution to deal with a street litter problem in their school or area. Once the class has evaluated all the ideas, the teacher sends the best idea to GoodPlanet.
Mutual inspiration
Colruyt Group finances the entire project and our environmental experts elaborated two inspiring workshops with GoodPlanet. “We are quite experienced in street litter actions”, says coordinator Goedele Daems. “Within our five-year plan ‘Joining forces for less street litter’ we run awareness campaigns, organise regular clean-ups, provide more waste disposal facilities, etc. But we also want to involve the youngsters, because they are the future. And who could inspire us more than the youngsters themselves?”
You can find more information about The Litter Challenge on the site of GoodPlanet.
GoodplanetWith this initiative, we contribute to the following Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
