Does teaching school children about recycling reduce household waste?

Abstract

Reduced waste generation is a prioritized environmental policy objective in the EU as well as worldwide. We perform a randomized controlled trial in Sweden with school children aged 10-16 to evaluate an intervention designed to reduce household waste, Environmental Education Programs (EEP). Crucially, we are able to examine the causal e ect of a wastethemed EEP on the actual waste generated in households where a child was treated. This is done by coupling the addresses of participating students with high-resolution address-level panel data on collected waste amounts, supplied by municipal waste authorities. Our design allows identi cation of the di erential e ect of the EEP on waste generation in treated versus control households. We nd no signi cant evidence that the intervention had any e ect on waste generation. There is also no indication that this null result is due to interference between treated and control students.