Waste Prevention Tracker Report 2024

Keep Britain Tidy’s Waste Prevention Tracker Survey provides a thorough understanding of public engagement in waste prevention behaviours, as well as attitudes, motivations and barriers towards reducing waste and consumption in the UK. 

Conducted by YouGov in February 2024, using a representative sample of the UK public, the Survey offers a valuable comparison to Keep Britain Tidy’s 2022 baseline study “Shifting the Public’s Focus from Recycling to Waste Prevention: How do we move people up the waste hierarchy?”, revealing shifts in public engagement over a 15-month period. The Waste Prevention Tracker Survey aims to identify if any waste prevention behaviours can be classified as an “established norm” comparable with recycling, as defined by WRAP. 

Results show that UK adults engage in a wide range of waste prevention activities. Behaviours related to food waste prevention have the highest engagement with reduce behaviours being more commonly practised than reuse behaviours. 

However, we have not seen progress on widespread engagement in waste prevention since the survey was first conducted in 2022 and conclude that none of the investigated waste prevention behaviours have reached the status of an “established norm”. The Survey explores the barriers to widespread waste prevention including lack of awareness, perceived accessibility and costs of waste prevention services as well as an underlying misunderstanding of waste. We uncovered that although most of the UK public engage in some waste prevention behaviours, they do so sporadically, and are often motivated by saving money rather than a desire to reduce their impact on the environment. 

Nevertheless, we found indicators of growing negative sentiments towards consumption among the public, who expressed that they feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff they own and the constant pressure to acquire new things. This may indicate that, with targeted support and guidance, we can improve the public’s understanding of waste prevention and increase engagement in waste prevention behaviours. 

Keep Britain Tidy will repeat the Waste Prevention Tracker Survey every two years to identify and track emerging trends in waste prevention engagement.

This work has been made possible thanks to an award from Postcode Earth Trust, a grant-giving Trust funded entirely by players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

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