Vital statistics: breathing new life into public engagement

Did you know that if all the waste statistics published in 2013 were cut out and laid end to end they would reach to the moon and back? Ok, we made that up, but no doubt you’ve heard many similar statements relating to numbers of cans landfilled, bottles recycled, and all manner of other waste-related data.

Eunomia was recently commissioned by the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) and public engagement body Waste Awareness Wales to review the waste statistics they currently use and to create some new, up-to-date and involving statistics. As part of this work, one day last spring we held a series of focus groups in Cardiff. There we did something which is rarely if ever done: we showed members of the general public a range of different types of waste statistics to see if they worked. No council wants to spend money on ineffective communications; moreover, there are both cost savings and environmental gains to be made from increased participation in reuse and recycling services. So, what did we learn, and how can it help?

Stats about the size of it

The archetypal statistic attempts to impress the surprising enormity of some value or other upon the reader through a comparison to something equally enormous: cue a cavalcade of football stadia, double decker buses and elephants. For example, one of the statistics we tested was: As a nation we use around 57,000 tonnes of cartons every year – that’s the same as the weight of 331 blue whales!

This is the classic statistic formula – you might think because it is tried and tested. However, when we actually tested it, the majority of focus group participants responded negatively, for two closely linked reasons. Firstly, people just don’t know the size of things that fall outside of the sphere of their personal experience, such as a blue whale in Cardiff. Secondly, after a certain point, any large number tends to become simply ‘a big number’, indistinct from any other and with little potential to capture the imagination. Envisioning one blue whale is difficult, let alone 331. Instead, we were told that using single, large, and familiar comparators (e.g. the Millennium Stadium) would make the statistics much more relatable.

This issue of imaginative constraints arose time and time again throughout the focus groups, suggesting that for a large part of the population the traditional approach may be entirely wrongheaded. Another suggestion for improvement was to scale the numbers down to a smaller, more personal level. For example, rather than talking about all the cartons used in a year – and then having to compare this with something massive – focusing on monthly or weekly usage makes available more easily imagined, and therefore more accessible, comparators.

Reinventing the whale: effective communication with stats is not just a fluke. Photo by Dan Shapiro, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Stats no concern of mine

This suggestion brings us to a wider issue in waste engagement, as the notion of relatability expands to include personal concerns. As well as scaling down periods of time, we can also scale down from national to regional and even household level. In addition to allowing smaller, more meaningful numbers to be used, participants in the focus groups found statistics that took this approach to be more easily relatable to their lives.

One way to facilitate imaginative involvement while creating personal relatability is to use localised comparators. For example, we had a generally positive response to the statistic: The amount of waste produced in Caerphilly each year is enough to fill the castle 5 times over! It is natural that people should feel they have more of a contribution to make within the smaller pool of contributors, and putting matters in local terms is one way to make people feel empowered. Also, pride in one’s community certainly comes into play.

Another approach tested was to compare waste management costs to money which could have been spent on public services, for example: 9,000 potholes could have been repaired in Cardiff last year from the money lost as a result of sending £523,373 worth of drinks cans to landfill. Again, the response to this type of statistic was generally positive, with participants understanding the link to council budgets.

However, all the groups we ran contained an unshifting core of participants who believed that the only way to motivate householders not already recycling was through an appeal to personal gain. Statistics focussing on the public good performed better than purely environmental ones, but none were met so favourably as those focussing on real, achievable personal goods. In short, the best performing statistics appealed to selfishness. Perhaps the best-received statistic was the statement: You can help save the environment and £50 a month by wasting less food. The appealing notion here, need it be said, wasn’t saving the environment.

We also trialled statistics comparing energy saved through recycling or generated by anaerobic digestion of food waste to the ability to power items around the home. Although we learnt a few lessons here (to refer to up-to-date technologies, for example) these statistics met with the – justified – scepticism that there is no direct link between recycling and having one’s own appliances powered. Even though we tried to communicate on a relatable, household scale, these statistics were still not made personal enough for some, because they did not talk about personal gains to be made.

Our groups were both responding on their own part and trying to imagine the reactions of the most cynical in society. In both cases, personal benefits were the statistical trump card. If our sample was representative of householders at large—which being Cardiff Citizens Panel, we hope it was—then it seems like public engagement in waste should be focussing a lot more on the personal cost savings achievable through waste reduction.

A very wrong engagement?

Aside from obtaining this rather downbeat perspective on human nature, we also learnt a few things about how best to phrase a statistic. For a start, although they are another key feature of archetypal statistics, people don’t actually seem to be too keen on percentages. For that matter, some people aren’t even that keen on numbers. Therefore, writing ‘over two thirds’ instead of 70% is more likely to make for a memorable statement.

Speaking of memorability, we were told that if a statistic contains two numbers, it’s likely that neither will be remembered; so it’s better to focus on just one. Consider the statement: In the UK last year, 3 million items of reusable furniture and electrical equipment were thrown away; enough to help 200,000 families to set up home. Simply saying that enough items were thrown away to help 200,000 families set up home would be more likely to communicate the desired message.

So in general, keep it simple; as simple as possible. But not always, because some of the statistics we presented were criticised for not containing enough information. And some people really liked the statistic about blue whales and found that it did help them imagine large quantities of waste. Which is to make an obvious point: not all people are the same, and different people will respond better to different types of statistics.

It is not that all traditional statistics fail hopelessly all the time. Nor is it – we can only hope – that when it comes to waste all householders behave as purely selfish agents. The real lesson is just that there is so much more we could be doing, so much more potential in the humble waste statistic if we put in the effort to tailor communications to our audiences. Keep the comparisons to double decker buses and swimming pools if you wish, but recognise that they are not the only or best approach. We need a whole palette of statistic types which can be employed strategically.

In the long run, investments in research like ours coupled with communications development should pay off both financially and environmentally through increased participation in waste services. With a little thought and effort, we might be able to say that the number of effective waste statistics published each year is enough to fill a decade’s worth of Isonomia blogs.