Can interventions improve waste management by the households? lessons from a randomized experiment in Sri Lanka

This randomized control trial (RCT) investigated the effectiveness of implementing two low-cost policy interventions to induce household members’ behaviour towards waste generation, waste segregation, and neighbourhood cleanliness in Dambulla local government area, Sri Lanka. After a baseline survey, as the intervention 1, only information leaflets containing instructions on household waste management were distributed among randomly-selected 93 households. As the intervention 2, each of another randomly-selected 96 households was provided with the leaflets along with a standard set of garbage bins consisting of three bins in three different colours: green bin for bio-degradable food waste; blue bin for paper waste; and orange bin for plastic and polythene waste. We keep another randomly-selected 92 households as the control group. The endline survey was conducted after a 12-week experimental period and treatment-effects of each policy intervention on outcome variables are estimated. The results reveal that even only with the provision of information leaflets, the households’ likelihood of segregating their waste into three categories can significantly be increased (by 17%, on average). The provision of three garbage bins along with leaflets has improved waste segregation behaviour of households substantially (by 36%, on average). However, neither intervention was successful in reducing household waste generation and improving neighbourhood cleanliness.