ABSTRACT
There is a European Union directive that calls for heavy cuts in the amount of household waste sent to landfill sites in Britain – currently about 1,400 of them. This leaves the British government with the tricky task of working out how best to wean the public off its habit of throwing stuff away. Downing Street has a ‘Performance and Innovation Unit’ charged with suggesting answers to such questions, and its proposals in this case shed interesting light on the prevailing view of how to get people to do environmentally beneficial things when their inclination is not to do them.
