Green Nudges

Green Nudges is a compilation of interventions that are aimed at influencing behaviour to trigger people to act more sustainable. With the climate crisis humanity faces one of the biggest challenges of all times. We just cannot afford to keep going as we did over the last decades. We need to change. But change is hard. If you’d ask people if they support sustainable behaviour or choices in order to save our planet and keep it inhabitable for future generations, a majority would certainly say yes. But how anthropologist Margaret Mead pointed out years ago: “What people say, what people do and and what people say they do are entirely different things.” People may support the good cause, but still like their daily meat, their big combustions SUVs or their long hot showers. This is often known as the “attitude-behavior-gap” or the “intention-action-gap”. The reasons for that gap are manyfold: - Humans are wired to imitate the (unsustainable) majority. - Humans are creatures of habit. And habits are hard to break. - Humans are selfish and status-driven. Motivation is THE driver for behavior. - Humans make irrational decisions. - Humans survive and thrive in the short-term. They don’t care much about abstract, future consequences. The Green Nudges we will showcase are meant to trigger real action. Sometimes immediate and sometimes at a later stage, when people are facing a decision and still have that nudge in mind. Not all of them have data available to back up the effectiveness. But we understand them as inspiration for institutions, decision makers or individuals for a greater good. For real action. The idea of nudging is not new and there are already quite a few around. But we had the feel that a lot of them are hidden in theoretical abstracts and scientific publications. Our objective is to make them more accessible, more easy to understand and to share. If you need help to identify potential Green Nudges for you, get in touch: hello@green-nudges.com