Nudge economics: Ecuadorian style

 By randihausken

Back in the UK, Nudge is a big thing.  The government has invested a lot of energy  in the hope that it can ‘nudge’ people into adopting pro-social, pro-environmental and healthy behaviours without having to regulate them. The idea is that by doing things like rearranging supermarket aisles, modifying pricing structures, and changing the default options on forms, people will end up doing the ‘right’ thing by default, without thinking and we’ll be able to save the planet and other such goals.

Here in Ecuador, it seems that nudging, perhaps unintentionally, has been encouraging people to do the high well-being low footprint thing for years. A perfect example was my experience this week when I went to pick up a juice at a little juicery (I can’t think of a more appropriate word because that’s pretty much all they sell) on my way to do some shopping. I’d noticed the sign saying ‘50 cents for a juice’ so I thought I’d grab one on my way to the market.  I ordered, sat and waited while the juice was prepared and then my face dropped slightly when the woman approached with the juice in a glass.  ‘Could I have it to take away’, I asked, as I thought I could drink it on my way to the market.  ‘Yes, that’ll be another 50 cents,’ she replied. Double the price!

In rich countries, price incentives often nudge you not to eat- (or drink-) in, as takeaway prices are cheaper.  But, environmentally speaking, this is a nudge in the wrong direction, as takeaways inevitably involve large amounts of plastic and disposable packaging.  Here, I was being nudged into doing the environmentally better thing – i.e. drinking-in and not wasting a plastic cup. Tight-fisted as I am, I complied. Of course, once I sat down and started chatting with the juice-seller, and had some time to relax and read a book, I remembered this was the better thing for my well-being too. I was too shy to ask the juice-seller if she realised how progressive her pricing mechanisms were.  Maybe next time...

There are other ways that Ecuadorian catering establishments encourage environmentally-responsible behaviour without even trying.  Here, the ‘almuerzo’ is king.  A set menu that costs between $1.50 and $2.50 (though I’ve heard you can get them for 25 cents in poorer parts of town), you get a first course (always soup) a second course, a juice, and sometimes dessert. Most people file into restaurants at lunch time and order the almuerzo without thinking.  And that’s not surprising.  In those places where you can order ‘a la carte’, prices for one dish are normally double or triple that for the whole almuerzo. It’s true that almuerzo portions can be a little dinky, but the prices are not proportionate to the amount of food you get.  Rather, I imagine, they are proportionate to the amount of waste associated with preparing the different meals.  A restaurant churning out a set menu which everyone eats will produce far less waste than one where fresh ingredients have to be kept in store for everything on a varied menu.

In the UK, according to a report published by the Sustainable Restaurant Association, half a kilo of food is thrown away for every meal eaten out. I imagine the figures are a lot lower here. Of course restaurant owners in the UK don’t want to throw away food, but they must cater to the tyranny of choice, where diners expect to be able to select from a wide range of dishes whenever they eat out. Here, it seems people are happy to go with what’s on the menu that day. 

Then again, I can’t say it works for me, when almost every day, most  almuerzo’s involve some combination of rice and chicken!