Project Detail

Plastic Free Armenia Behavioral Change and Awareness Raising Campaign

Trees with many plastic bags stuck in the branches and rivers full of plastic waste is a view one can experience traveling through Armenia. According to UNDP over the past 20 years, we have generated and accumulated nearly 100.000 tons of plastic litter in Armenia. The issue of plastic pollution has become even more concerning due to the following factors:
- Plastic bags are relatively cheap or even free in some supermarkets,
- People are not well informed of the consequences of plastic pollution and do not have a clear picture of the problem.
Efforts of the current Government of RA in introducing environmental tax regulations to plastic bags will greatly contribute to making them less affordable and therefore less attractive. However, only regulating the issue is not enough. It is of huge importance to incorporate behavioral interventions to motivate and nudge people towards giving up plastic voluntarily.
The proposed project offers behavioral change initiatives through awareness-raising campaigns, reward mechanisms and behavioral experiments aiming to replace single-use plastic bags with reusable ones. In addition, it will greatly contribute to the overall objective of developing a policy framework and educating conscious citizens who are well aware of plastic pollution consequences and motivated to act adequately.

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Project Snapshot

Grantee:

My Step Charitable Foundation

Country:

Armenia

Area Of Work:

Chemicals

Operational Phase:

OP6 -Y4 (Jul 18 - Jun 19)

Grant Amount:

US$ 50,000.00

Co-Financing Cash:

US$ 43,300.00

Co-Financing in-Kind:

US$ 24,450.00

Project Number:

ARM/SGP/OP6/Y4/STAR/CH/19/17

Start Date:

4/2019

End Date:

12/2020

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

Project Characteristics and Results

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods

During the project, 6000 consumers of Tsiran Supermarket (official project partner) will be provided with material tote bags and offered different incentives such as cash bonuses on their loyalty cards and/or special gifts if they replace single-use plastic bags with material ones. For this, the Supermarket has allocated a budget of around $15,000 for the duration of the experiment and expressed readiness to increase it for further phases of the project. By replacing single-use plastic with reusable material bags the consumers will save minimum AMD7200-9000 ($14.75?18.5) annually with current prices of plastic bags in the market . If the changes offered by the current Government of Armenia related to the reduction of volume of single-use plastic in the country will come into effect, particularly adding environmental tax to the price of the plastic bags (from current 10 AMD the price will be increased into100 AMD) starting from July 2019, the amount of savings calculated above will grow 10 times.

Replication of project activities

In addition to the bags and some printed materials to be produced and printed within the frames of the project PSAs (public service announcement) will be created and presented on all official pages of My Step Foundation and project partners, during thematic events and on billboards in Yerevan, among children and youngsters in schools, and everywhere possible to raise awareness about the harmful impact of single-use plastic bags.

Inovative Financial Mechanisms

It is planned to design and conduct a behavioral change experiment to better understand the motivation and need of people to consume single-use plastic. The experiment will be implemented in cooperation with Tsiran supermarkets chain. For this experiment 6000, customers will be randomly selected out of partner supermarket's loyalty card holders' database. The selected customers will be divided into 3 groups with around 2000 participants in each. For each group of the experiment different incentives and motivators will be offered to replace single-use plastic bags with reusable material bags. All participants of the experiment will receive a tote bag with a barcode and an information letter explaining the experiment. The barcode on the bags will be used to track the behavior of customers throughout the duration of the experiment. At the end of the experiment, it will be possible to track the results and understand which methods and incentives were the most efficient in terms of influencing people to give up plastic bags and which did not work well. The experiment will last from 6 months to 1 year, to understand the short-term and long-term impact of the designed intervention.

Capacity - Building Component

My Step Charitable Foundation was founded in August 2018. The vision of the Foundation is to find solutions for those problems that cannot be fully addressed by the government at this point. The Foundation is implementing projects in different sectors, including culture, education, environment, and social security. Considering a very young profile of the organization it is planned to enlarge the project staff for professionally addressing the challenges and opportunities, and design future activities aimed at wide awareness raising campaign against single-use plastic.

Significant Participation of Indigenous Peoples

N/A

Linkages gef projects

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Planning gef grant

N/A

Project sustainability

One of the most important factors ensuring the sustainability of results achieved within the frames of current project is the legal and policy framework currently being developed by the Ministry of Nature Protection of RA. Having a law regulating this sector will become the ground on which the outcomes of the projects will be strongly rooted. In addition, the following efforts to promote sustainability and long term impact of project outcomes will be undertaken: ? Permanent evaluation of the progress through tracking the behavior of supermarket's consumers, and fine-tuning of the rest of project activities based on the challenges and opportunities discovered. ? Creating a gradually growing network consisting of supermarkets and other sales points, where plastic bags are used the most. The mentioned partnership network is planned to cover also other cities and towns as well as rural communities in Armenia. The enlargement of the project geography will be built on the lessons learnt and mechanisms tested on previous phases of the project. Understanding the real complexity of our project conditioned by behavioral change among people My Step CF envisages development and implementation of other phases of the project after the end of the current one.

Gender Focus

Since more often shopping is done by women rather than men, all activities will be designed in a way to consider this specific fact about the project target group. Special attention will be paid to this while developing reward mechanisms motivating consumers to replace single-use plastic with reusable material bags. To promote women empowerment and social justice through the project activities active cooperation with social enterprises for the production of material tote bags is envisaged. Around 10,000 bags will be sawn and printed by local enterprises working to improve the social conditions of women and people with disabilities from rural areas.

Policy Influence

The current Government of RA plans to take appropriate measures to address the issue of plastic bags pollution and presented a policy draft aiming at minimizing the plastic waste on the one hand and creating new habits related to the use of plastic on the other. According to the suggested policy and law drafts starting from July 2019, an environmental tax will be added to the price of plastic bags. It is envisaged to ban the sale of plastic bags in Armenia starting from January 2022. Lessons learnt during the project implementation will be collected and incorporated into a set of policy recommendations aiming at phasing-out single-use plastic. The document will be shared and discussed with the project stakeholders from CSOs, private sector companies, international organizations, donor communities, and others. After the public discussion, the policy recommendations will be finalized and presented to the Ministry of Nature Protection aiming to complement and/or fine-tune the policy framework adopted (or to be adopted) by the Government.

Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment

The partnerships built and knowledge gained throughout the project implementation will contribute to the development of a comprehensive awareness-raising campaign targeting all members of our society (from children to adults and elders) in all the regions. After implementing the awareness-raising campaign in Yerevan it is planned to expand to the next bigger cities and towns of the country through the branches of partner supermarkets in Yerevan.

Policy Impact

The policy impact offered by the current project will address the issue of plastic pollution in the country resultant mostly from three major factors: ? lack of knowledge on the issue among people, ? availability of plastic everywhere (very cheap or in some cases even free), ? no policy or legal framework regulating the field. The behavioral experiment and resultant awareness-raising campaign planned within the frames of the project are the components which will bring in the change in the habits of people and, thus, improve the overall situation with plastic pollution in the country.

Planning non gef grant

Understanding the real complexity of the project conditioned by behavioral change among people My Step CF foresees the development and implementation of other phases of the project after the end of the current one. Achieved results and experience gained during the project implementation will help to formulate a concept for further phases and planning appropriate fundraising activities related to it.

Notable Community Participation

Young people are in the focus of the project since they are the main addressees of global challenges the world faces these days. Within the frames of the project, a group of young people will be trained and involved in awareness raising activities in supermarkets and grocery shops in Yerevan and other cities and towns of Armenia. Main target of the awareness-raising campaign are going to be the local CSOs and youth groups in the communities the project will cover on its later phases. These organizations and/or groups are the ones who can play the role of multipliers and pass over the information to their already existing networks.

Project Results

By the end of the project the following results are expected to be achieved:
? 6000 participants of behavioral experiment start using tote bags (for at least 6 months),
? Another 4000 bags distributed within the frames of the project,
? Over 10,000 people are aware of the harm caused by plastic pollution, its consequences,
? At least 4 public social advertisements created on the topic and circulated widely on the TV, among the beneficiaries of local CSOs, during public events, etc.
? Analytic report created based on the data collected from behavioral experiment implemented for the first time in Armenia in this field,
? Evidence-based policy recommendations developed reflecting the expertise and knowledge gained during current project implementation,
? New business opportunities for SMEs working in the textile business to produce material tote bags,
? Reduced number of plastic waste in the environment,
? Environmentally conscious growing generation.

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Indicators

Livehood

Number of individuals (gender diaggregated) who have benefited* from SGP project 10000

Biophysical

Number of innovations or new technologies developed / applied 1

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