

Here's something I don't get to say too often: I'm in agreement with the Daily Mail. For once, I find myself nodding at its frothing rage: this time over a new recycling scheme called "BinCam". (You can probably already tell where this is going.)

The scheme being piloted by researchers at Newcastle University is, according to the Mail's headline, a "snooping device that can record everything you throw away". As you might expect, it's a little bit more subtle than that, so here's researcher Anja Thieme explaining how it works on her website:

BinCam is a personal informatics system - developed by Jack Weeden - to monitor individuals' food waste and recycling behaviour. It uses an augmented kitchen bin to automatically capture and log an individual's waste management activity. Each time the bin is used, a mobile phone installed in the inside of the lid captures an image of the contents and uploads it to a Facebook application. The application offers various visualizations of individuals' bin usage to increase their awareness of the items they disposed of. Applying Facebook as a platform for reflection offers the potential to engage individuals to regularly use the application. In addition, we regard the social network of Facebook, with its communication dynamics and social influences, as a powerful source in changing personal attitudes and behaviour.

It's hardly surprising that the Mail has zeroed in on this project. It pushes all its readers' trigger points: rubbish collections, over-reaching councils, privacy violations; scientists in ivory towers; evils of the internet.

But, for me, the over-riding reason why such a scheme is destined to be rejected by the public is that it is, yet again, an example of hitting people with a stick – this time, shaming by peers – to get people to recycle. Surely, basic human psychology tells us that any punitive system intending to correct "bad" behaviour must also include rewards for "good behavior". Or, in an ideal world, you would only have rewards.

The researchers behind the project are now seeking to implement six-month trials to better assess the scheme's potential. But, to be fair to the researchers, they have already noted many potential problems, particularly over privacy and impediments to behavourial change. As their briefing paper (pdf) notes:

The sharing of personal information on a public platform raises several privacy and ethical concerns. Thrown away items are normally objects that people have disposed of and do not necessarily want to be identified with anymore. Thus, how can the risk for individuals to feel publicly humiliated be minimized or even eliminated? One possibility to address this issue could be the creation of bin identities that only refer to a bin instead of referring to a specific person. This means the person to whom a bin belongs can stay anonymous unless s/he wants to admit ownership.

Another possibility could be that a bin is shared between many users (e.g. in multiple occupancy houses), so that its content cannot directly be attributed to the individual. The blurring of identities behind the collected bin data, however, carries the risk of minimizing the social influence effects. Individuals, if living in shared houses, may feel less responsible for the common bin, and, instead of reasoning about their bin activities, fall for a behaviour of 'social loafing'. In this regard, finding a trade-off between the privacy of personal data and its exposure in public poses another challenge, if we aim to engage and socially persuade users to change for the better.

It is interesting to note that future trials will be based in both England and Germany. Earlier this year, I visited Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, the German town in the south-western state of Rheinland-Pfalz which boasts the nation's best recycling rates. When thinking about BinCam, I can't help but wonder how the town's citizens might react if such a system was offered to them. I suspect they would raise their eyes in confusion rather than vent any Mail-like rage. Their system of financial incentives is so simple, effective (70% recycling rates) and, most importantly, liked that they find it hard to see why others are not doing the same.

Of course, there are notable cultural differences between the Germans and British: broadly speaking, we tend to see recycling as a burden, whereas they see it as a civic duty. And this system wouldn't work everywhere: urban areas of high-density housing, for example. But it seems a far more sensible starting point than, in the words of the Daily Mail, Big Brother-style, draconian measures such as cameras in bins, even if they are presented as hip and cuddly through the window dressing of being synched with Facebook and Twitter.