Wasteful Thinking
[SECONDARY SOURCE, READ IN FULL AT SOURCE. This is science journalism reporting Catlin and Wang, not our read of the paper, and the article's prose must say so wherever these numbers appear] Kwok, R. (2012). 'Wasteful Thinking.' Conservation Magazine, 13 September 2012. The design detail. Experiment 1: 44 undergraduates tested pairs of scissors by cutting shapes from paper, some in a room with a bin and a recycling bin and others with a bin only; students without the recycling option used an average of 9.45 grams of paper and students with the recycling bin used 17.21 grams. Experiment 2, the field study: a men's lavatory, towels weighed in the dispensers morning and night for fifteen days with users counted by an infrared beam on the door, then a recycling bin plus a sign saying towels put in it would be recycled was added and usage monitored for another fifteen days; average weight of paper towels used per person rose from 6.12 grams to 7.13 grams. Catlin is quoted saying people may view recycling as a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' to consume more, and adds that this does not mean we should scrap recycling bins. WHAT THAT IS, PLAINLY: forty-four undergraduates in one laboratory, and one lavatory in one building measured before and after with no control site and no randomisation of the intervention; a field effect of about one gram per person, roughly sixteen and a half per cent on their own numbers, against a near-doubling in the laboratory.
[SECONDARY SOURCE, READ IN FULL AT SOURCE. This is science journalism reporting Catlin and Wang, not our read of the paper, and the article's prose must say so wherever these numbers appear] Kwok, R. (2012). 'Wasteful Thinking.' Conservation Magazine, 13 September 2012. The design detail. Experiment 1: 44 undergraduates tested pairs of scissors by cutting shapes from paper, some in a room with a bin and a recycling bin and others with a bin only; students without the recycling option used an average of 9.45 grams of paper and students with the recycling bin used 17.21 grams. Experiment 2, the field study: a men's lavatory, towels weighed in the dispensers morning and night for fifteen days with users counted by an infrared beam on the door, then a recycling bin plus a sign saying towels put in it would be recycled was added and usage monitored for another fifteen days; average weight of paper towels used per person rose from 6.12 grams to 7.13 grams. Catlin is quoted saying people may view recycling as a 'get-out-of-jail-free card' to consume more, and adds that this does not mean we should scrap recycling bins. WHAT THAT IS, PLAINLY: forty-four undergraduates in one laboratory, and one lavatory in one building measured before and after with no control site and no randomisation of the intervention; a field effect of about one gram per person, roughly sixteen and a half per cent on their own numbers, against a near-doubling in the laboratory.
Written from the sECONDARY SOURCE, READ IN FULL AT SOURCE. This is science journalism reporting Catlin and Wang, not our read of the paper, and the article's prose must say so wherever these numbers appear.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Kwok, R. (2012). 'Wasteful Thinking.' Conservation Magazine, 13 September 2012.