Conversation Station with the GRAB Trust

Kerry's project comes from a pilot programme looking at how we can fund communities to lead research, with the community getting the money, and then partnering them with researchers. 

It all began with the Grab Trust, a charity that stands for protecting the environment particularly by addressing waste and recycling issues in Argyll y Bute.

The idea for the research project came from Kerry’s job cleaning beach litter: lots of ideas as to what needs doing and what she would like to do. 

The problem: single use cups have a significantly higher environmental impact than reusable cups in the long term. 200 million disposable coffee cups are used each year in Scotland, which creates 4000 tons of waste every year. This helped to narrow down the project. 

Narrowing down the project: 

Surveys through time showed plastic cups are a big problem in Argyll y Bute (3.5 cups per 100 metres of beach). They started in 2022 and did some evidence collection around the community, got background information and started the planning BEFORE being paired with the researchers. 

Once they came up with this rough idea of something they would like to tackle with the climate change grant project, they were teamed up with researchers. Professor Marilyn Carrigan from Heriot Watt university and in the Edinburgh business school, and Professor Victoria Wells, who works for the schools for business and society at the University of York.

Academic researchers guided Kerry into the steps of community based social marketing: identifying the behaviour that we wanted to change, in this case, reducing the amount of single use cups being used

1. identifying the barriers and the benefits of doing this change

2. developing some strategies

3. pilot the program 

4. implementing the program 

Then they met with the researchers to talk about what we were hoping to achieve, how they wanted it to work, and get the “before picture”. 

Methods for evaluating the cups trial:

• Businesses recorded the cup type usage on a tally sheet. 

• post intervention questionnaire collected in all the tally sheets

• visit by the researchers to the businesses to explore what when well  

The Trust wanted the small businesses to be proactive and participate in the project and how it would be created to suit them. 

They used leaflets on a change in legislation about the ban in single use straws and plastic stirrers as a gateway. Kerry personally delivered these leaflets in person to as many businesses as she could, and make that initial contact. For the following contacts: trying to do as much of it in person as possible, that way getting a response is so much easier. Be personal with everyone is essential. Going in and speaking to them and speaking to the staff and asking what kind of cups do you use, and would you be interested in joining? How do you think it might go? Right from the start, trying to get feedback about what would work for them. 

Academic researchers guided Kerry into the steps of community based social marketing, and provided all the information. Things the community  kind of knew but didn't know were actual proper things.

Researchers gave them a rough framework. “If you can do that, perfect. If you want to change it slightly to you, by all means, do.”

Academic researchers made it seem very official. They added the "official" stamp. 

• “gave it that sort of punch that the businesses suddenly sort of said, okay, so this is an actual project.” 

• “they added the trust factor that we weren't just trying to get them to change for the sake of it, that we were doing it as an actual proper study, for proper reasons.”

Both sides, the community group and the researchers enjoyed working together on these projects.

Kerry had high hopes at the start, but she realised it was hard to involve businesses into the trial, as they were afraid of change. 

Not quite the major impact that they were hoping to have, but they learned a lot of lessons.

• Reusable cup use doubled from 1% to 2% of all cups used in Oban

• In the second trial in Helensburgh, reusable cup use increased to 5%. 

During the project there was public confusion over how to dispose of things properly.

People are unaware that there are no facilities to recycle single use cups in Argyll y Bute, so paper compostable and plastic cups alike are thrown into landfill. People assume cups will be recycled if they put them in the recycling bin!

Bioplastics are not all biodegradable. Veg ware needs industrial composting, which is high temperature and not the same as home compost (and Argyll y Bute does not have this infrastructure!)

“the best thing we can do is try to use reusable alternatives rather than compostable”

After the trial:

They listened to the businesses, their fears and realities. For example, they found businesses were too scared of losing customers by insisting that they had to bring a reusable cup, tourists often don't want to carry a keep cup around with them, they thought they have already made the change they need to make by using vegwear. 

There was so much fear of change among businesses, policyholders and customers. Particularly at that time after COVID there was still the debate over whether reusable or single use is more hygienic. 

The biggest barrier was convenience. Worrying about remembering our cup is very low on our priority list. Having things that are convenient is key. Needs to be the no brainer, just easiest thing to do for it to work best. 

Lessons: 

It's often just as important to know what doesn't work as it is to know what does. 

• Her experience was that she had really high hopes at the start, Unfortunately, that didn't quite happen. She found it was really hard work, doing the trial, working with all the businesses.

• It was key to engage directly with the community: teamed up with the local high school to organise a scavenger hunt to launch the trial, and advertise the trial in local newspapers.

They published the findings in a European Journal of Marketing (Kerry coauthored).

Both academic researchers and community researchers have done talks to share the results.

They are organising events to meet and discuss how to proceed from here. They organised a rubbish summit to bring all the stakeholders from the community, the businesses, the council and policy makers, the recycling facility, together to present their results of what they found and try to get some discussion started for how to address this issue. 

Researchers have teamed up with other organisations to discuss the results and do other trials across Scotland. 

Influencing policy: there is a government consultation on charging for single-use disposable beverage cups, and the grab trust have submitted their findings.