How we’re making a habit of saving the planet?

The compound effect of people, making ongoing, positive changes could be huge. So we engaged some of the brightest minds in behaviour change to help people form new planet-friendly habits that are easy and sustainable in every way.

HOW HABITS ARE FORMED

Habits are the actions that are triggered automatically by a contextual cue. Charles Duhigg, author of the Power of Habit, and an expert on behavioural psychology, describes the process of forming a habit as – the Habit Loop. A simple neurological loop at the core of every habit, a loop that consists of three parts: A cue, a routine and a reward.

This works for all kinds of habits, both good and bad, the good ones sadly are harder to create as the reward is not usually inbuilt or as instantaneous. Think about it this way…

Most addictive and destructive habits have a built in reward system that requires little or no input from you.

Smoking a cigarette, or drinking five alcoholic drinks are easy habits to adopt because they light up your brain with the neurotransmitter dopamine (and a slew of other pleasure chemicals). These substances naturally reward your brain and encourage continued usage even though they are detrimental to your overall health and well being.

WHAT MAKES THEM STICK

Our aim is to encourage consumers to continue to use the sustainable products we point them towards, long term. As such we need to investigate what does and doesn’t make them stick.

As Andrew Ferebee, wrote in the Forbes article, The Science Behind Adopting New Habits (And Making Them Stick) – Adopting new habits is only ever difficult for one of three reasons:

1. You aren’t aware of or consciously applying the habit loop

2. You are attempting to do too much too soon and setting yourself up for failure However Charles Duhigg, also adds this into the mix:

3. The reward is not sufficient.

REMOVING BARRIERS

Looking at how habits could be formed in greater detail, we realised that we could manipulate the actions that are triggered automatically to something more planet-friendly. If we could then remove any barriers or obstacles then we stand a great chance. So we started to look into the things people already do.

Placing ourselves in the consumer’s shoes we asked ourselves three simple questions.

WHAT ARE SOME CUES THAT I CAN SETUP IN MY ENVIRONMENT TO REMIND ME TO TAKE ACTION?

We took this a stage further – targeting established daily routines. The cues already exist, people can do the same thing, we just swap out their usual products for brighter alternative products.

WHAT ARE SOME WAYS I CAN LIMIT THE BARRIER TO ACTION FOR MY DESIRED HABIT?

We looked at potential barriers, money, time, access, rewards and solved them. Offering Routine boxes that target a certain routine of the day, for a discounted cost, delivered to them and rewarding them for how much they stick with and how long they do it. Overall it feels easy, more manageable and once it is done, you can carry on as normal.