Nudging for Improved Recycling Behaviours at Street Markets

Weekend street markets are a longstanding tradition in Portugal an all over the world. Local vendors offering something for everyone, from clothes, decor, and tools to kitchen goods, furniture, fruit and vegetables. The Vendas Novas street market, held monthly on the third Sunday in the city of Évora, Portugal, is one of them, featuring over 110 vendors,

However, before our interventions took place, the market had been facing a recurring environmental challenge; the market’s vendors were unaware of the opportunity to recycle their waste and instead mixed all their waste into black trash bags, leaving them by their tents at the end of the day. This led to low recycling rates for the market as well as higher cleanup costs from the city's municipality.

In collaboration with Gesamb – an organization responsible for the management and operation of the Intermunicipal System of the District of Évora – as well as our partner Sociedade Ponto Verde, we set a shared goal to address these challenges and improve waste sorting practices among vendors as well as increase the market’s recycling rate, with the overall aim to reduce the environmental impact of the market.

To tackle these behavioral challenges, our intervention focused on making waste sorting intuitive and hassle-free through four key strategies:

• Making it easy: Vendors were given different coloured bags according to the waste they produced with each colour representing a different type of recyclables to avoid mixing all their waste into the same trash bag. They were then instructed on what waste goes into which coloured bag.
• Using visual cues: To further ensure that properly sorting waste became second-nature to the market’s vendors, we also equipped them with colour-coded flyers and magnets that matched the colours of the recycling bags. The colour-coded flyers and magnets also visually explained what type of waste should go into each colored bag so effectively sorting waste would be as effortless as possible!
• Letting the colours lead the way: The recycling station was made to be more visible and appealing by enhancing the waste containers with different colours and various visuals.
• Highlighting where to recycle: A board was placed at the market entrance communicated the recycling norm at this market, linking recycling to circularity and highlighting that this way we’re all helping to give new life to waste!

These interventions led to improvements in the recycling behaviors in the market, specifically:

• The market’s overall recycling rate increased from 11% to 39%!
  • Mixed waste was reduced by 58%.
  • Plastic and metal collected in yellow containers increased in average by 99%.
  • Paper and cardboard collected in blue containers increased in average by 161%.

As a result, these collaborative efforts demonstrated how simple yet strategic nudging interventions can transform waste management at public events and markets— improving recycling rates, and making sustainable choices easy!