Our 2023 round-up
Another year is coming to an end and the team at Behaviour Change have been reflecting on all that’s happened over the past 12 months. 2023 has really been a year of change and growth. We kickstarted the year by moving into our brand new office after 6 years in Unit 19! This gave us more room to welcome two new members of the team — Kate, our Head of Strategy, and Aimée, our Project Assistant. It also meant we could host more in-person meetings, team drinks, and even a cheese and wine night with WRAP.
We ran a total of 22 projects this year, all with a goal to create positive social or environmental change. We’ve tackled a range of issues, including food waste with FareShare, at-home water efficiency with Northumbrian Water and recycling in flats above shops with ReLondon. We launched a first of its kind pilot with RNIB, in collaboration with Islington Council and Groundwork London. Our interventions tackling pavement obstructions led to a decrease in badly parked hire bikes by 62% in the first 3 weeks.
We entered year 2 of the Chewing Gum Task Force’s 5-year scheme to tackle chewing gum litter across the UK, which saw us deliver over 10,000 behaviourally informed signs to 58 councils in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Our interventions have reduced gum littering by up to 80%! Lastly, our partnership with WRAP continued to grow throughout 2023 as we built on the groundbreaking new citizen behaviour change strategy we developed last year. We’ve been working on individual strategies for three moments of transformation, including loose fresh produce, pre-loved clothing and maximising the prevention effect of food waste collections. Our loose fresh produce strategy is now in its delivery stage and we’ll be looking to pilot trials with supermarkets in the new year.
2023 saw us travelling to lots of events, workshops and outings across the UK (and beyond!). We attended WRAP’s all-staff event at the Barbican where we participated in activities and discussions about how we’ll continue making an impact through our work together. Our Behavioural Intervention Designers attended a careers fair at The Royal Society to talk to budding behavioural scientists about their role. The team travelled to Durham, Liverpool, Leeds, Belfast, Glasgow, and more for workshops and events — David even took a trip to Barcelona to deliver a speech and attempted to sustainably travel by train!
We also took the opportunity of now being a team of 7 to hold the first annual BC Away Day! In May, we headed to Cambridge, hopped on bikes and enjoyed a wonderful day out which included lunch at the Orchard Tea Garden, punting on the River Cam, and dinner at The Millworks. Throughout the day we discussed business objectives, team culture and ways to develop and learn for the future.
Whilst we spent lots of time out and about this year, we’ve also made the most of our Soho office location with a trip to the theatre to see Dr Semmelweis (possibly the only play ever written about randomised control trials), many gelatos from our local ice cream shop, delicious team lunches from the array of vendors at Berwick Street market, and Coffee & Wellbeing catch ups in cafes with our Wellbeing Officer, Polly.
It’s safe to say this has been a pretty epic year for BC. We’ve enjoyed hosting more and more people in our office and sharing our space with our friends at WRAP. It’s been great to onboard new clients and work again with existing ones (including 2 new projects with RNID after the campaign we worked on with them last year achieved such great results). We’ve also had some wonderful personal highlights this year including a milestone birthday from David, Tasha becoming a homeowner, and Honica getting engaged!
There are a ton of innovations in the works for next year which we can’t wait to share with you all. For now, we’d just like to thank our clients, partners and friends for making 2023 such a great year. We’re looking forward to seeing what 2024 has to offer — watch this space!
