A Few (Un)Happy Returns: The Psychology of Plastic Reuse – Prof Thomas Webb

The Manchester Centre of Health Psychology is pleased to host our April seminar with Professor Thomas Webb from the University of Sheffield.
This seminar will take place in person, 12–1pm on Wednesday 15th April, in Coupland 3, LG.119.
Renowned for his research on self-regulation, motivation, and behaviour change strategies that help individuals achieve personal goals and modify habits, he contributed to the "Many Happy Returns" project, which integrates behavioral and environmental sciences to enable mainstream reusable packaging systems.
Talk Abstract

The way that humans use plastic has led to a global environmental disaster. Over 460 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year and just 9% is currently recycled, leading many to argue that we need to move toward a more circular economy in which material is used and reused multiple times. The title of this talk is a play on the title of a project that I co‑led between 2020 and 2024 called “Many Happy Returns”, which was a multidisciplinary project designed to conduct the research needed to enable reuse at scale.

However, our research and experience implementing a reuse system at the University of Sheffield testified to the challenges posed by reuse systems, including a lack of willingness to tolerate signs of prior use, anxiety about technology, established habits and so on. We tried a number of strategies to address these issues (e.g., providing information about cleaning or the technology, explaining the environmental benefits of reuse), but most were not successful.

I’ll suggest that these challenges (among other things) explain why reuse is likely to remain limited to specific product categories (e.g., cups for takeaway hot drinks) and specific sectors of society (e.g., the middle classes), rather than lead to a wholesale shift toward a circular economy. I’ll end by discussing an alternative way to manage plastic waste suggested by my colleague Professor Tony Ryan, who argues that carefully burying plastic could actually capture CO₂ and combat climate change.

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