Beckett: People need easy environmental alternatives
People will only become more environmentally friendly if they are given “easy alternatives” to unsustainable behaviour, Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett said on Tuesday.
Such behaviour is often embedded in “deeply entrenched” systems and will only be broken by a “catalyst”, she added.
Though recycling performance in the UK has improved, it still lags behind much of Europe. Equally, interest in Fair Trade products and usage of public transport has increased, but there has not been the explosion that environmentalists have been hoping for.
Speaking at the Environment Agency’s annual conference in Birmingham, the Environment Secretary said that changing people’s behaviour “begins at home”.
Promising that Government would take a lead, she said: “We need to improve our own environment management systems, and set an example through our procurement power.
“Public procurement accounts for 16 per cent of GDP in the EU as a whole. If we do this right, we can send strong signals to other buyers and consumers, and drive down the costs of new, greener technologies”.
Ms Beckett said that the Government is already working with businesses to help them minimise their impact on the environment – and save millions of pounds at the same time – and would shortly be announcing how it would recycle landfill tax revenues to support businesses that minimised their waste.
However, she called on people in their everyday lives to do more in cutting energy usage and demanding more environmentally friendly products.
“All of us – whether we’re in Government, business or as individuals – should be prepared to think deeply about how the benefits of a modern lifestyle can be enjoyed in a way which enhances rather than harms the world around us. At present, our homes, their contents, our transport choices, our food supply all come with big environmental footprints,” Ms Beckett said.
Information was rarely the problem – rather, it was that people were not acting on the information they had. That was why there should be “easy alternatives” to encourage a change in behaviour.
She added: “Many unsustainable behaviours are locked-in and made “normal”, not just by the way that we produce and consume, but by the absence of easy alternatives. We need to enable different behaviour choices, even where the barriers to change appear too great.”
The Environment Secretary suggested that catalysts for better behaviour could include voluntary reward schemes for household recycling, or the creation of an “Environment Direct” service – modelled on NHS Direct – giving people clear and unbiased information on environmental choices – something that the Government is considering.
