Let’s Reuse-it! : Institutional Sustainability and Faculty and Staff Reuse at UBC
Creators: name: Phan, Matthew
name: Swearingen, Hannah
name: Belec, Jackson
name: Dufour, Gabriel
name: Kittiratanapaibool, Wasinee
Publisher: name: The University of British Columbia
Year: 2024

description: Reuse-it! is an online marketplace open to UBC faculty and staff designed to complement sustainable reuse of materials as part of UBC’s broader circular economy efforts by diverting waste from landfill. In collaboration with UBC SEEDS (Social Ecological Economic Development Studies), this research project investigates the barriers and incentives to UBC faculty and staff use of Reuse-it! in order to provide recommendations for how to increase usage of the platform. Additionally, we explored sustainability values and cultures at play within UBC’s decentralized organizational framework, drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to understand how institutional organization and individual behaviour contribute to the success of sustainability initiatives. We designed a survey which received 125 complete responses from Reuse-it! users to establish a quantitative basis from which to evaluate users’ understanding and experiences of the platform and sustainability initiatives at UBC. We also conducted 20 semi-structured interviews to gain a more in-depth, community-based understanding of experiences with Reuse-it! and engaging in sustainability initiatives at UBC. Our study reveals several barriers to faculty and staff engagement with Reuse-it!, including confusion over the platform’s identity and name, timeliness, and restrictiveness. We also identify specific incentives in the form of ease of use, cost effectiveness, and alignment with user’s sustainability values. Through ANT, we visualize these barriers and potential incentives in actor-network diagrams. We extend our findings to discuss broader concepts of role confusion and organizational fragmentation as informing the ways in which UBC faculty and staff do and do not participate in sustainability initiatives at a large institution like UBC. Finally, we offer the following suggestions for improving user engagement with Reuse-it!, including formalizing Reuse-it! into campus-wide standard operations, clearly integrating the platform with other zero-waste initiatives, and expanding the role of Reuse-it! on campus. Through our recommendations, we suggest ways to generate a more cohesive cross-campus and inter-departmental institutionalization of and operationalization of sustainability that builds upon the current configuration of UBC’s organizational structure. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”