Personal communication as a strategy to improve the quality of household organic waste - Does it work? results from a quasi-experimental study in Northern Hesse, Germany.

Household organic waste has great potential for closing nutrient cycles in agriculture. This requires proper waste separation by households. Personal communication at the doorstep potentially improves household waste separation behaviour but it is expensive and findings from existing research are mixed. Based on results of previous studies and from a quasi-experiment with non-equivalent groups design in two German municipalities, this paper argues that efficiency of personal communication depends on its context. It can positively influence behaviour when recycling is voluntary and participation rates are low. However, it has no significant effects if recycling is mandatory. One explanation could be different perceptions of recycling in mandatory and voluntary schemes. In voluntary schemes door stepping can activate the intrinsic motivation of households. In mandatory schemes, all households need to participate irrespective of intrinsic motivation. This research shows that this creates a situation in which a small share of households is responsible for almost all contamination. This can be overcome by considering extrinsic factors that affect recycling behaviour. The paper recommends further research to understand which combination of incentives, sanctions and information is efficient in affecting behaviour change in mandatory recycling schemes.

Organic Juice Processing Quality from the Processors' Perspective: A Qualitative Study.

Organic food quality is based on processing. While the EU organic production regulation focuses on agricultural production, private standards provide more detailed information about further processing. For the development of organic processing, practitioner perspectives can provide valuable input. To get insight into practitioner perspectives, we conducted semi-structured expert interviews with nine employees of seven partly organic juice processing companies from Germany and Austria. Interview topics were (i) quality of organic juice processing in general, (ii) assessment of specific processing techniques, (iii) product quality of organic juice and (iv) flow of information between producer and consumer. We conducted a thematic analysis. We found that the experts' understanding of process quality mostly includes more aspects than the EU organic production regulation. It covers the whole food chain plus aspects of social and environmental sustainability. The experts prefer directly bottled juice of local raw materials but chiefly accept juice made from concentrate of exotic raw materials because of environmental concerns. Organic juice is preferred when it is cloudy and natural fluctuations are interpreted as an indicator of natural quality. The experts report that consumer information is challenging because of low food literacy. Raising this might help reduce the number of processed juices on the market.