Researchers at the University of Gothenburg found that feelings of disgust from dirty recycling stations lead to poorer waste sorting. An experiment showed clear improvements when stations received extra cleaning. The study was published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.
The researchers collaborated with municipal housing companies in Gothenburg. For three weeks, two recycling stations were cleaned thoroughly each day while eight others served as a control group. The amount of incorrectly discarded waste was documented before and after the intervention. Results showed that littering decreased clearly at the cleaned stations. Control stations remained largely unchanged. In separate studies residents responded to images of clean or dirty stations. People who viewed images of dirty stations were less inclined to say they would sort correctly. Jacob Sohlberg, one of the study authors commented on the results in a press release.
