Urban areas often have lower household recycling rates than the national average, partly due to the presence of high-density housing and flats. In addition to traditional flats and apartments, Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs) - where more than three unrelated tenants share common areas - are thought to be a particularly hard-to-reach target for Local Authorities (LAs). HMOs represent a growing housing trend and understanding the recycling behaviours of sharers is important to understanding overall recycling performance. Making it easier for people, who live, work or visit cities and other dense urban environments to recycle, is a priority for government.
Recent research
In November 2019, Resource London (a partnership between the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB) and WRAP) conducted a ‘deep dive’ ethnographic research study to look at HMOs that have kerbside recycling services, seeking to build a new understanding of the barriers to recycling and what opportunities there may be for LAs to engender behaviour change.
Scope
Ethnographic methods combining interview and observational research were chosen to understand people’s day-to-day lives in HMOs, allowing a broad range of evidence of both attitudes and behaviours to be gathered. The sample focused on privately rented HMOs with kerbside collections, from a range of London boroughs, choosing not to focus on overcrowded or illegal HMOs where other more pressing social issues are inherent.
Insight
Our research suggests that HMOs are highly varied, with no two households the same. There are differences in occupant numbers, age ranges and household types, and HMOs could include friends or strangers, ranging from young professionals, students, rehoused homeless or new migrants to the UK. As a result, the social dynamics of households varied widely, however in all cases maintaining good relationships with other sharers was the main influence on behaviours.
Many people made claims to be motivated to recycle, only to be observed to behave quite differently. Despite most respondents claiming they thought it was important to recycle, households were not in fact recycling very well and there was evidence of inconsistency and a large amount of contamination.
Key findings:
- structured rules around household chores were almost non-existent and whilst sharers were likely to recycle in the kitchen, they were unlikely to sort their waste properly in private spaces
- sharers were often unaware of the external bin set up and there was a clear disconnect between internal and external facilities and practices
- sharers were often not willing to seek out accurate information about recycling, choosing to rely on friends and family, social media or common sense and there was a lack of engagement with council services and information
Interventions to improve recycling in HMOs
Despite these significant barriers, there are three key points of leverage where behaviour change interventions can be targeted:
- Individuals
LAs may wish to generate conversation around waste and recycling with individuals, through the use of existing touch points within the rental process to establish rules, or develop HMO specific information packs and dedicated webpages
- Entire households
Carrying out annual HMO home visits, encouraging the nomination of recycling champions and communicating the consequences of contamination are all simple and cost-effective ways of targeting households to overcome the key barriers identified within the research
- Landlords
Landlords also have a key role and LAs should look to develop relationships with landlord forums and wider stakeholders in order to ensure good baseline services and standardised communications are in place for sharers.
Read the full Research Report
For more information about the research carried out in London – you can read the full report here.
To listen to a walk-through of the key findings, discussion about potential opportunities for improving recycling in HMOs, Q&As and sharing best practice, you can watch the recording of our recent webinar (20th May 2020) here.
What does this mean for you?
What’s your understanding of recycling rates in HMOs in your area? Is it a problem for you? If you would like to talk to us about your specific challenges with HMO’s and see if we can support you to improve your recycling rates, then please contact one of our local authority advisors at la.support@wrap.org.uk.