Collective Actions to Reduce Waste

A team of CERN and CEI researchers from Aotearoa New Zealand have been awarded a Marsden Fund grant to investigate collective actions to reduce waste.

Conventional approaches to waste reduction focus on getting individuals to change their attitudes and behaviours, often through actions like recycling.

Instead this research focuses that ways that people are act together to reduce waste and bring about collective change. The researchers ask, how does involvement in community waste-reduction organisations affect people’s everyday habits and relationships? how can people act together to create wide-spread social change that stops objects and materials becoming waste in the first place?

The team is led by Professor Kelly Dombroski from Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa Massey University and the other members area Dr Gradon Diprose (Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research), Dr Matthew Scobie (Ngāi Tahu, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury) and emerging researcher Lila Laird (Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury). 

Through collective inquiry groups and wānanga, the team will explore how organisations enable shared practices of waste reduction, including with the Zero Waste Network, Para Kore (a marae-based zero-waste initiative) and Repair Network Aotearoa. 

In partnership with these organisations, the researchers will seek out examples of innovative waste-reducing practices and co-develop an action plan to promote waste reduction in Aotearoa. 

Photo by Nareeta Martin on Unsplash