Research Post: LU043 Enviroo
How can we incentivise consumers to recycle on the go?
Get paid to do a PhD with the Centre for Global Eco-Innovation at Lancaster University.
Funded PhD linked with Enviroo Limited Ref. No. LU043
Get paid £48,000 between the project start date and 30th June 2023 (paid in monthly instalments)Your UK tuition fees are paid (international candidates will need to pay remaining fees)Be part of the multi award winning Centre for Global Eco-Innovation within a cohort of talented graduates working on exciting business-led research. The Centre was declared “The outstanding knowledge exchange and commercialisation initiative in the UK”.This project is based at Lancaster University, so you will gain your PhD from a Top Ten University, recognised as The Times and Sunday Times University of the Year 2018 and International University of the Year 2020. You will also work alongside colleagues at partner institutions across the North West.Finish in a strong position to enter a competitive job market in the UK and overseas. Within the home, most of us have become quite used to sorting our rubbish and recycling. However, this behaviour doesn’t seem to have transferred to when we are ‘on-the-go’ as most of the packaging and waste we consume goes straight to landfill. Enviroo Ltd plan to develop a customised reverse vending machine that can collect consumers recyclable waste on-the-go. This project will investigate how best to encourage consumers to continually use this facility. This PhD project will investigate why there is a discrepancy in people’s recycling behaviours i.e. between recycling at home and on the go. The focus will be on determining the attitudes, motivations and likely incentives in order to change people’s behaviour and make on-the-go recycling habitual. The project will also investigate how to make a deposit return scheme successful (rather than just a one-off occasional behaviour); what products the consumer would be interested in recycling and how best to incentivise consumers to use these machines to recycle on the go. This PhD will be based within Lancaster University’s Psychology department, however there is an element of business and marketing to the research. Therefore applicants should have either a first class or a 2:1 degree in Psychology (or a related discipline) and a relevant Masters qualification. Applicants should preferably have interests in inter alia sustainability, environmental issues and recycling. The Graduate Researcher will be supervised by Professor Mark Levine and Dr Mark Hurlstone in Psychology and Professor Margaret Hogg of the Lancaster University Management School.Enviroo Ltd will be part sponsoring this PhD project and are in the process of building a recycling plant in the North West UK which will recycle 100% of the Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic waste that it receives and create ‘food-grade’ polymers from this. They are passionate about creating a closed loop recycling method, with long term viability and their ethos is to bridge the current gap between consumers and circular economy stakeholders.Deadline: Sunday 6th December 2020Interview: Wednesday 9th December (between 9am-12pm)Start: January 2021This project is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund and is subject to confirmation of funding.
Download application documents here