Publisher's Synopsis
Around the world, the natural environment is becoming a primary driver of political action arid behavioral change. Morally and politically, it is almost impossible to deny the power of Green logic. Population growth and growing resource use have put the basic conditions that support our existence at risk, disrupting climate, weather, oceans and food production, and costing ever more in human, economic and environmental terms. As a result, Green rhetoric is being universally adopted. No politician can publicly deny the importance of environmental action, yet few political systems have delivered the change that most citizens would like to see. Surveys have repeatedly shown that most people feel little sense of agency and surprisingly little trust in governments to deliver real progress. Environment is a classic example of a policy field that infuses all others, where the targets and language are easy to adopt but achieving them is much harder. It requires us to change most of what we do and most of the institutions we rely on, often all at the same time. For governments, this seems even harder in an age of globalization, when their powers are thought to be dwindling in the face of technological change and international capital markets. This book shows how radical environmental progress can be achieved by changing one of our most universal and mundane activities: the way we empty our bins. The solutions it presents are very simple: developing new household habits and using new materials like plastic boxes for doorstep collection. But the systems needed to make it work at the right scale are far more complex. The experience of creating them in practice, which the author and his colleagues have been engaged in for the past three years, provides lessons that extend far beyond waste: to the role of business, the structure of government and the relationship between the local and global economies.