How should municipals adapt their waste services when individuals work more from home?

Many have experienced what it is like to work for home during the Corona crisis.

A large share of them have been positive and as a consequence, it has been claimed that many will spend more time at home and less time in professional environments in the future.

Such behavioural change is likely to affect the amount and types of household waste, which in turn affects several of UN´s Global Development Targets, e.g. the targets to (i) reduce all types of waste, (ii) increase resource efficiency and (iii) reduce the environmental impact of waste.In order for the society to develop policy interventions that are as effective as possible (e.g. information campaigns and tariffs), design appropriate infrastructure solutions (e.g. vessels, recycling stations, recycling centres and collection cycles), and design attitude-changing activities that are as effective as possible, it is important to know what the relationship between ´the time individuals spend at home´ and ´the amount/type of waste they generate´ looks like.

The purpose of this project is to identify that relationship.The method used is based on a combination of (i) waste bin weights for households in the Swedish municipalities Partille and Varberg and (ii) questionnaire responses about how the proportion of time individuals spent at home have changed during the Corona crisis.

All households living in detached houses in the two municipalities (approximately 30,000) will be included in the study.