Responsible Consumption Mission 2020-2023

What's happened so far?

In April 2021, BWA and its partners came to an agreement on the Responsible Consumption Mission and its 'problem focus': to reduce Australia's material footprint through responsible consumption. We then worked to define the Mission 'goal' and the 'focus areas': textiles, furniture and electronics/electrical items.

We undertook Phase 1 of the Mission: Behaviour Prioritisation bJuly and September 2021 (see below 'Timeline of Mission Activities').

This involved identifying and working with a variety of 77 stakeholders to generate our "long-list" of 84 behaviour change challenges, and prioritising those behaviours to identify a "short-list" to take into the next phase of the mission. The final "short-list" of behaviours were:

1. Consumers donate/sell pre-owned (usable) fashion items
2. Consumers swap pre-owned fashion items
3. Consumers donate/sell pre-owned furniture
4. Consumers acquire pre-owned fashion items
5. Manufacturers design electrical devices for end of life recovery (e.g. disassembly, modularity, repairability, recyclability)
6. Manufacturers design furniture for end of life recovery (e.g. disassembly, modularity, repairability, recyclability)
7. State/Federal governments enforce warranty procurement policy for electrical devices

For more information about this see:

Behaviour Prioritisation Summary Report

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Phase 2 of the Mission: Intervention Co-design was completed between October 2021 and March 2022. This involved taking a targeted group of stakeholders through a series of four workshops to refine the short-list of behaviours, understand the drivers/barriers of the behaviours, brainstorm potential intervention ideas, and finally prioritise ideas to take forward into Phase 3.

The final intervention chosen was:

• Transforming the concept of second-hand stores to improve customer perceptions and experience, and reduce barriers to purchasing clothing and furniture second-hand by individual consumers.

Whilst this targets an individual consumer behaviour, the intervention is at the level of the retailer, and so attempts to adjust the system in order to create change.

For more information about this, see:

Intervention Co-design Summary Report

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What's happening now?

We are currently in Phase 3: Trialling the selected interventions. We are excited to work with Salvos Stores to understand and evaluate their efforts to transform their stores.

For more information, visit the Trialling sub-page.