The Little Book of Green Nudges is a quick guide to reducing your campus’ environmental impact through behavioural change in the form of a concise and user-friendly publication. It summarises the evidence around what nudges work best while seeking to encourage more sustainable practices among students and staff across several behavioural categories. It also provides simple guidance on how to implement and evaluate behavioural interventions in a variety of contexts.
What is nudging? When a university provides easy bicycle parking and repair stations, it nudges students to bike to campus. When a university makes plant-based food the default dish, it nudges students towards environment-friendly diets. These “green nudges” are positive and gentle persuasions to influence behaviours on campus and to instil environmental values that can last a lifetime.
Launched by UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Behavioural Insights Team and GRID-Arendal, the book contains 40 ready-made nudges – simple measures that make it easier to make green choices and aims to inspire up to 200 million students around the globe to adopt environmentally friendly habits.
How to get involved:
Universities / Student Unions / Green Offices: You can nominate your campus to be part of the pilot phase (starting in early 2021 depending on the state of the pandemic). This means that you will select at least one green nudge from “The Little Book of Green Nudges” and implement it on your campus. You will then let UNEP know how it went, the challenges yuou faced, any feedback you might have had.
Students: You can bring the Little Book of Green Nudges to the attention of your university and encourage them to get involved and sign up to be a pilot campus. You can also help to raise awareness around sustainable behaviour change on your campus while working together with other students, sustainability offices, green offices, catering offices, etc. to launch the pilot phase on your campus and implement green nudges together.