Here’s a story that a reader shared with me a couple ofmonths ago. I finally figured out what I want to do with it. The reader sees it as a story about everyday citizens’ ignorance. But I think it reveals how we overestimate the importance of education and underestimate the power of peer pressure. Here’s the story:

I was walking through my subdivision in northeastern Illinois. It was a trash/recycling day, and noticed that a homeowner had placed several 4-foot fluorescent tubes (T12F40’s) in his recycling container on the curb (we utilize the least-common-denominator method: single-stream/commingle).Just then, the garbage/recycling truck turned the corner, so I decided to linger and confirm that the garbageman would reject the tubes.To my surprise, he threw them in the hopper with all of the other recyclables - glass, newspapers, and plastic. I approached him and asked, “You threw fluorescent bulbs into your recycling hopper??”He laughed and said, “Yeah, we do it all the time. We recycle everything!”

I asked the reader what they thought this story revealed, and they replied:

…it points to both carelessness and a broad lack of education - among consumers and haulers - in the recycling arena.

I disagree. Social and scientific research is most conclusive that educating individuals about environmental problems simply does not move many to participate in the solutions.

Doug McKenzie Mohr, dean of the “social marketing” movement, writes:

“While education and advertising can be effective in creating public awareness and in changing attitudes, numerous studies show that behavior change rarely occurs as a result of simply providing information.”

“Social or community context appears to be one of the key factors that can motivate people to take pro-environment actions,” writes the Roper Starch research firm in their 2005 report Understanding Environmental Literacy in America. “[O]ne of the most important determinants of behavior change is not information/education, but people’s beliefs about the pro-environmental behavior of others.”

Spitfire Strategies, in their study, Discovering the Activation Point, concurs, but puts it more succinctly, writing “it is more comfortable for most people to try something they have already seen someone else doing.”

If we apply the insights from these studies to the situation at hand, what would seem to be a better solution to increase the rate at which the refuse workers properly handle  flourescent bulbs?

• Schedule a workshop to explain to workers (one more time!) about the dangers of mercury in the bulbs and how to identify which ones are recyclable and which aren’t
• Create a public display in the refuse workers’ office that shows how most of the workers are properly sorting the bulbs out of the recycling — signaling to those who don’t that they are in a minority

A reader named Gary sent me a very pertinent question last week:

I recently accepted a job to build a non profit watershed council for the City of XXXX. They will provide ongoing funding once the council is established. I’m a little concerned about the title “Watersheds Council”. The city’s public outreach guru feels the word doesn’t present as negative an impression in the west as it might in the east, but I’m wondering if I should push for a title like “XXXX Clean Water Alliance”. It will be an uphill battle, but I have a suspicion it might be worth fighting before I put out a name to the public that will cause me problems from the start. Any advice?

Gary, you’re absolutely right. Your life will be much easier and you will make more of a difference if you replace the word “watershed” with “clean water” in the name of this new entity.

The problem with “watershed” is not that it provokes people, it’s that it’s just meaningless to so many. Click this link and scroll through the quotes to get a sense for that.

To be blunt — and provocative — it’s a big mistake to hide the fact that we stand for something as popular as clean water behind a word as puzzling as watershed. Yet many of us voluntarily handicap ourselves this way. There are countless “watershed councils,” “watershed associations,” “watershed specialists,” and “watershed coordinators” out there working quite a bit harder to secure appreciation and cooperation from their fellow citizens, just because of the unfortunate choice of organization names and job titles.

As if our jobs weren’t hard enough. I have no idea why we do this.

I suspect this question hits close to home for a lot of folks out there, so I’m curious about what others think. Hit the “comments” link below and share.

P.S. As for the question of whether “council” is better than “alliance,” I have no idea.

Yet another question popped into my in-box last week, this time about vocabulary on an interpretive sign:

“A member of the watershed group I’m doing this project for thinks we should leave words like ‘stormwater‘ and ‘watershed‘ on [an interpretive] sign so people can learn what they mean. He’s concerned that if we don’t challenge people just a bit they won’t ever learn about watersheds. I see his point but I’m concerned if people don’t know those words they won’t bother to look it up and the sign won’t have as much impact. (Yes, no or maybe?)”

Thanks for the question. It comes up a lot in my workshops. I’ll address it in a roundabout manner.

It is a deeply rooted instinct among nature protection and pollution control elite to try to teach the public our vocabulary, to arm them with the information they need to arrive at the right conclusions. We are convinced that people need to have the facts before they will form new opinions and habits, or change old opinion and habits.

Yet social research usually finds otherwise. Here’s a little example I like to share when this question pops up. A 2006 study sponsored by National Geographic found that when younger American adults are presented with a map of the United States:

• One in four can’t find the Gulf of Mexico
• One in three can’t find Louisiana
• One-half can’t find Mississippi

Think about that for just a minute. After thousands upon thousands upon thousands of news stories about Hurricane Katrina, complete with maps and every imaginable infographic, many Americans have still not learned the most basic geographic facts of the situation. And despite that, they’ve formed strong opinions about who’s to blame and what should be done next.

At dinner tables all across America, people discussed the aftermath of the hurricane like this:

• The tragic lack of fairness in the racial disparity of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
• Our fury at federal, state, and local authorities for failing to work together to bring aid the families and children of the Gulf Coast
• The outpouring of support we all offered to the Red Cross and other charities that told us what we could to do to
• The Bush administration’s irresponsible failure to plan ahead for a disaster experts had warned was coming
• The need to invest in rebuilding New Orleans and preventing another catastrophe like Katrina

Sound familiar? It should. Those are water words that work. In the wake of Katrina, everyday citizens did not whip out their roadmaps to look for where New Orleans was — they scoured the news looking for evidence of leadership qualities and commitment to broad social values. And nature protection and pollution control experts will enjoy more success changing minds and behavior by expecting the public to respond to future situations this way and calibrating our message accordingly.

So back to the question: People just don’t need to understand expert shoptalk like “stormwater” and “watershed” to appreciate the importance of wetlands, forests, raingardens, rain barrels, porous pavement, and the like. Why turn well-meaning citizens off with a boring vocabulary lesson when you cut straight to the chase by highlighting broad social values like “clean water,” “nature protection,” and “wildlife?”

Here’s a reader question that landed in my in-box this week: “Is ‘ground water’ is a good term to use or should I should find a substitute?” It’s a great question, with a complicated answer.

The good news is that the word “groundwater” doesn’t make many people defensive or suspicious, the way “land use planning” or “endangered species” do. It’s also not a complete head scratcher like “biodiversity” or “non point source.”

But the bad news is that many citizens are pretty vague about the connection between rain, groundwater, water bodies, and tapwater. Many could tell you what groundwater is — but not why it’s important. So if you tell these people “Rain gardens help recharge groundwater,” many of them will nod politely and think to themselves “How nice, so what?”

My hunch is that you will get a better reaction if you use the words “well” and “springs.” These words evoke the image of water coming back out of the ground, where people and animals can use it.

Thanks for the question! Good luck with your project!

Citations:

Delaware Residents’ Attitudes Toward and Behaviors That Affect Water Quality
Texas Water IQ: Water Conservation Quantitative Research Summary
National Report Card on Safe Drinking Water Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviors
Understanding Environmental Literacy in America and Making it a Reality