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‘Yuck Factor’ In Recycled Water
Why we can get over the ‘yuck
factor’ when it comes to recycled water
Daniel Ooi
In light of climate change and a growing population,
water authorities around the world are looking at the treatment of recycled
water to achieve water security and sustainability.
Recent authors on The
Conversation have raised the possibility of expanding the use of water recycling in Australia, noting the
potential benefits for domestic, agricultural and industrial water supply.
Some contributors have
noted that the major roadblocks to water recycling, in places where it could be
beneficial, are not technical issues, but public reluctance to use recycled water.
Emotional
Responses
In the past, our aversion
to recycled water has been explained by the “yuck factor”.
Some people have an
emotional response of disgust to using recycled water, even when they know it
has been highly treated and is safe.
There are large individual differences in the strength and type
of different people’s disgust responses.
Psychologists have tried
to understand why our thought processes can lead some people to think of
recycled water as unclean.
One explanation is contagion
thinking, the idea that once water has been defiled it will
always remain unclean, regardless of treatment, at
least according to the mental models that underlie our emotional responses.
What such approaches
often neglect is that cognition does not occur in a cultural vacuum, but is
affected by the associations and stigmas of society.
It is important to note
that these emotional responses are often in conflict with our rational
thinking.
Some theorists, such as
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, have argued that we make
judgements using two contrasting systems.
One of these systems is
slow and operates according to a formal risk calculus. The other is fast, based
on positive or negative emotional responses.
Because of this, how we
feel about someone or something (positively or negatively) is often as
important as what they are being judged on.
In other words, the fact
that a person understands that a highly treated sample of recycled water is
safe to drink may not be enough to stop the emotional response,
as we often tend to think intuitively, drawing on our social and cultural values.
The most important
question, however, is whether the emotional responses some people have to
recycled water can be changed.
And what role do stigmas
associated with cultural norms play in shaping these?
Sustainable
communities and water recycling
In places where water
recycling has been introduced, it has simply become a fact of life.
In Singapore, citizens of the island nation have
widely accepted NEWater (as the Public Utilities Board has branded it). It’s
even celebrated at a visitors’ centre that has become a minor
tourist attraction.
In Windhoek, the capital
of Namibia, various forms of drinkable recycled water have been in use for almost 50 years, with no significant
impact.
If these communities can
accept recycled water, perhaps our aversion is simply a passing phase, which
will disappear when people get used to it? If so, then cultural norms must also
play a role, with acceptance building with increased familiarity.
Culture
change and recycled water
Cultural cognition is an approach that
suggests that our beliefs and judgements about risk and cleanliness are
determined by social norms, as well as more innate processes of cognition.
As cultural norms, peer
pressure, stigmas and the public scientific consensus all affect our beliefs and judgements, then
emotional responses to recycled water are strongly linked to our cultural
classifications.
The anthropologist Mary
Douglas coined the term “matter out of place” to refer to things that
do not easily fit into our known systems of classification, and thus often come
to be thought of as dangerous.
Recycled water fits into
this category, as it straddles our conceptions of both clean and polluted.
As water recycling is a
fairly new concept and most people have no direct experience with it, they
revert to inferring from the categories that they do know about.
Thus, our emotional
responses to water recycling are associated with uncertainty, even though our
rational scientific understanding tells us it is no different to any other
treated water.
It is our cultural
beliefs that determine whether we see recycled water as clean or dirty, and
these categories are not fixed but are a reflection of our society at that
point.
Looking
to the future
If we are to understand
how to use new water technologies effectively for social and environmental
benefit, we need not only to understand the scientific case for these
technologies, but also to change the social and cultural values that inform our
attitudes to them.
Culture is dynamic. Our acceptance of any particular
new technology is based on norms that are current at a particular time.
The “yuck factor”, which has been the focus of so much
research over the years, may well change with increasing
exposure to recycled water.
Research
Fellow, Institute for Sustainability and Innovation, Victoria University
Daniel
Ooi has received research grants from the Australian Water Recycling Centre of
Excellence (AWRCoE) and the National Centre of Excellence in Desalination
Australia (NCEDA). Both the AWRCoE and NCEDA were funded by the Federal
Government as part of the Water for the Future program.
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