Recycling household waste: A classification of the logistics used by consumers

Household waste is one of the drawbacks of the consumer society, and is a crucial challenge in terms of sustainable development. One essential requirement is the improvement of consumer participation in waste recycling, in particular by sorting. However, the extent to which consumers contribute towards waste recycling varies widely. Over recent decades, several studies have attempted to explain these differences in recycling activity. They have looked at socio-demographic determinants (age, income, education, sex), at motivation, linked to both internal factors (attitudes towards the environment, beliefs, values) and external factors (social norms, financial incentives, laws) (Biswas et al., 2000; Fiorello, 2011; Granzin and Olsen, 1991; Hornik and Cherian, 1995; Kreziak and Cova, 2010; Shrum et al. 1994). Other work stresses the role of contextual determinants linked to the ‘place' of recycling, such as the room available in the home and the distance from collection points (De Young, 1989; Desjeux, 2002; Heckler, 1994; Humphrey et al., 1977; Jolivet, 1999; Oskamp et al., 1991; Vining and Ebreo, 1990). Nonetheless, these studies call for the development of an additional aspect to explain the disparities in level of recycling: the ‘logistical' aspect of recycling. From a theoretical point of view, recycling logistics is one of the many different types of logistics that individuals use in their consumption practices and which is at the heart of a current marketing research field, that of ‘consumer logistics' (Granzin and Bahn, 1989; Granzin et al., 2005; Teller et al., 2012). Although the logistical aspect is described as a determinant of consumption practice, it has rarely been studied in marketing literature. In this context, our precise research question is the following: how do consumers perform and coordinate the logistics required for recycling household waste? To answer this question, we conducted a study on twenty cases of recycling logistics used by consumers, at home. Whatever the motivation and context in which they act, consumers who want to recycle must be able to overcome numerous logistical problems (Granzin and Bahn, 1989). They are not required to solve these problems one at a time but to coordinate the three logistical activities involved in recycling: separating the waste, storing it and removing it (Pieters, 1991); and this in circumstances that are not always favourable (Bekin et al., 2007; Thøgersen, 1997). We identified three types of logistics deployed by consumers to recycle their waste, which induce a specific recycling process in terms of separation, storage and removal: stockpiling, just-in-time and pooling. These logistics depend on: (1) the characteristics of the context in which consumers are, both from an internal perspective (type and size of residence) and from an external perspective (type of collection system; rural or urban zone) and (2) the desired relationship to waste in physical, spatial and psychological terms. The results also show that these logistics are more or less suitable for certain individuals: individuals with physical disabilities; individuals who need order, tend to hoard everything, or put things off; or badly organized individuals. Our findings contribute to the literature at two theoretical levels: (1) they enhance the marketing literature on recycling behaviours by not reducing them to recycling levels (objectives to attain) but by including whole logistics systems (activities to carry out); (2) they contribute to the field of ‘consumer logistics' by describing the logistics deployed by individuals during one stage of consumption, recycling. The thesis defended is thus that recycling is a question not only of motivation and context, but also of logistics.