Maybe we need a ‘Nudge’ to help environment

My parents were true-green, fanatical environmentalist do-gooders. They just didn’t know it.

When my dad pulled nails out of old boards, he’d collect them in a pail. Later he’d go in the tool shed and pound each one straight on the anvil and save them for reuse.

Mom washed out plastic bread bags, saved all food scraps for fertilizer in the garden or food for pets and livestock.

New home decor meant reupholstering an old chair and refinishing the magazine rack.

They used glass jars over and over and bought their beef from the neighbors. When the blender broke, they took it apart and fixed it, they kept the lights off to conserve energy and they planted trees to cool the house and protect it from the winter winds.

It was Reduce, Reuse and Recycle in spades.

Today, a blender can’t be fixed even if you wanted to fix it. Stores such as Ikea have created a disposable mentality for even furniture — buy it cheap and chuck it quick. Kraft Snackables — the little trays with a few pieces of cheese, crackers and ham — have enough packaging around them to protect a soldier in battle.

As much as we know it’s good to use less, throw less and reuse more, we still have a problem actually doing it.

In fact, we often ridicule those who do what we know is right.

The annual spring pickup has been under way in North Mankato. And, as always, the scavengers were out moving slowly down the street, looking through piles of residents’ discards.

I hear lots of people put them down, calling them the “curb creepers” or “garbage creepers.” But taking a perfectly good chair, serving platter, or 2-by-4 that someone else doesn’t have use for anymore is practical and applaudable.

But in our twisted societal norm, it is more honorable to send good things to the landfill than reuse them.

There’s a new book called “Nudge” by law professor Cass Sunstein and social economist Richard Thaler that might help.

The book lays out a simple but logical premise: Most of us don’t think much about the choices we make. For most decisions we simply take the easiest choice — or the choice that most others are making — whether it happens to be good or bad for us.

They note a test done by a California electric company to reduce energy use. The company sent with its bills a list of how much average energy people in a neighborhood used and how much the person getting the bill used. The result? People who used large amounts of energy suddenly decreased their usage to conform with their neighbors, even though no one suggested they do it.

The authors point out a host of other illogical decisions we make: We eat more when we have a bigger plate; we switch support to a new political candidate because they surge ahead in a poll, not because we researched their position but because others support them.

Their solution to help people to make choices that are better for them and society is to “nudge” them in the right direction. A large segment of workers, for example, don’t sign up for their employer’s matching 401k contribution, even though they would agree it’s best for their financial future. The solution is to have all businesses automatically sign workers up for the match unless the worker chooses to opt out.

The concept already has worked with recycling. Cities started giving all residents blue bins to put recyclables in. When people noticed all the blue bins on their neighbors’ curbs and had the easy choice of using the free bins and setting them out, recycling became a standard practice.

North Mankato could give a nudge to people to reuse more. Make the scavenging of curbside treasures an honor. The city could host a contest — give awards to the person who found the best or most interesting item during cleanup days. Maybe a “Reuse Master” award for the person with the best collection of salvaged stuff.

After decades of education on Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, it still isn’t cool to do, even if we know it’s smart.

Maybe it’s as simple as Sunstein and Thaler suggest in their book: We just need to trick ourselves into doing the right thing.

Tim Krohn is a Free Press staff writer. He can be contacted at 344-6383 or tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com.