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This chapter focuses on discussing the Malaysian government's ‘No Plastic Bag Day’ campaign. This is due to the fact that consumers are accustomed to use plastic bag in their daily life activities. However, considering the hazardous impact on the environment, the government has banned the use of plastic bag in most of the states. While many consumers accepted this new rule whole-heartedly, many are still struggling to adopt it. This chapter highlights its journey of implementation and challenges pertaining to this sustainability marketing campaign in Malaysia.

Single-use plastic bags given to shoppers by retailers have increasingly become a key target for sustainability initiatives, with bans being introduced around the world. The rationale for such bans is based on the environmental impact of single-use bags, compared to their multi-use alternatives. The arguments for bans are underpinned by assumptions about how consumers will respond to the changes, yet do not account for the known patterns of buyer and consumer behaviour from the social sciences. This lessens the delivery of desired outcomes and hampers implementation strategies. This chapter draws upon this established knowledge to demonstrate how such marketing knowledge of fundamental buyer and consumer behaviour is critical when developing and implementing a public policy programme, using the example of a retail ban on the use of single-use plastic bags in Australia. It illustrates how these known patterns hold in this context and shows how social marketing can be used to help shape programme implementation and uptake and the reinforcement of new positive behaviours.

This research aims to explore the role of awareness of harm and responsibility for environmental protection in reducing pollution from single-use plastic bags (SPBs) in coastal communities (CCs). To this end, this study develops and tests a unique model that explains residents’ intention to reduce the use of SPBs in coastal regions.

A questionnaire was used to collect data from 721 coastal residents in Vietnam. Structural equation modeling and moderation analysis were applied to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that awareness of the impact of SPBs on the environment and human health and awareness of the responsibility to protect the coastal environment significantly affect attitudes and intentions to reduce the use of SPBs. Moreover, such awareness of responsibility strengthens the attitude-intention relationship.

The findings suggest that CCs should not receive a lower priority in campaigns and efforts to reduce SPBs. In this regard, providing residents with free environmentally friendly bags and education programs on the impact of SPBs could be implemented.

CCs are directly impacted by pollution from SPBs. However, little is known about how this affects their polluting behavior. This study shows that CCs are not immune to polluting behaviors and that SPBs can be significant among residents. It also demonstrates that awareness of harm and feeling responsible for the environment are essential drivers of (intended) sustainable behaviors.

Plastic has been a very useful material which is very cheap, easy to carry and is resilient to biodegradation. That is why plastic has been used, sometimes reused, and overused due to the reasons mentioned above. As a result, landfills and oceans are full of plastic. But if we consider all the negative health effects, environmental / ecological effects it has in present times, we can understand that it is environmentally very expensive to use plastic. Bangladesh is a relatively young country with dense population and limited resource. Proper management of plastic remains an issue with the country. Considering these, this chapter focuses on how plastic is used, how it is treated as waste and what can be possible solutions in reducing the amount of plastic in Bangladesh.

This chapter highlights the overwhelming situation of plastic pollution in the Nigerian tourism sector. While plastic waste pollution is detrimental to the ecological system, it also has a direct negative effect on Nigeria's economic sectors including tourism. Approximately, 8% of the world's carbon emissions are caused by tourism-related activities. Tourism activities have contributed enormously to the improper disposal of trash, raw sewage and toxic chemicals into Nigeria's environment. However, there is a lack of comprehensive initiative or policy to curb the gigantic waste pollution in Nigeria, specifically in the Nigerian tourism sector. This has caused more confusion among the consumers and the tourism practitioners. Therefore, this chapter outlines the current situation, the implication for the businesses and the responsibility of the stakeholders.

This study aims to develop a research agenda for the advancement of theory application in practical contexts by presenting a case study of the Engagement in Plastic-free Innovation for Change (EPIC) programme delivered by Plastic Oceans Australasia (POA).

EPIC is a behaviour change programme by POA that aims to reduce single-use plastic (SUP) consumption in workplaces. The study evaluates the programme’s impact on employee perceptions and actual behaviour through pre- and post-programme data collection in two Australian workplaces. Data was gathered via online surveys and waste audits and analysed using SPSS statistics and Excel.

The case study highlights the need for theory application in programme evaluation instruments. Theory was not used in the programme evaluation tool, and theory could not be mapped onto the tool retroactively. The data from the present study showed mixed results. Data from Workplaces 1 and 2 indicated that EPIC successfully improved three out of seven employee perceptions of SUP reduction efforts. However, individual workplace data showed that EPIC only improved one out of seven perceptions in Workplace 1 and three out of seven perceptions in Workplace 2. Surprisingly, Workplace 1 observed a decrease in plastic waste after the programme, while Workplace 2 saw an increase. Without the clear integration of theory, it is difficult to pinpoint areas for improvement. It is, however, posited that COVID-19 restrictions on people attending their workplaces and low survey response rates may have contributed to these unexpected results.

The present study highlights key improvements that can be made to evaluations of voluntary behaviour change programmes. Careful evaluation of behaviour change programmes is key to improving programme effectiveness. Practitioners will find the suggested improvements from this study helpful in developing and refining voluntary behaviour change programme evaluations.

This is one of the first studies to evaluate the impacts of a voluntary behaviour change programme aimed at reducing SUPs in the workplace. It also adds to the limited literature on voluntary behaviour change interventions overall and adds to the movement towards better application of theory in behaviour change interventions.

Mauritius is a Small Island Development State (SIDS) with limited resources, and it has been witnessed that many containers used for storing household and industrial products are made from plastic. When discarded as waste, those plastic containers pose a serious environmental and economic challenge for Mauritius. Moreover, landfill space is getting increasingly scarce, and plastic waste is contaminating both land and water. Therefore, it is of the utmost necessity to develop solutions for Mauritius' plastic wastes. Due to its abundance and accessibility, plastic waste is a promising material for recycling and energy production. One potential solution is the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict household plastic consumption, allowing policymakers to design effective strategies and initiatives to reduce plastic waste. Such information is a critical component to be able to efficiently plan for the collection and routing of trucks when collecting recyclable plastics. The development of new strategies for the recycling of plastic waste and development of new industry can address the import and export potential of the country to achieve self-sustainability as well as contribute to reduction in plastic pollution and amount of waste landfilled. These plastics can thereafter be used effectively for recycling and for the making of 3D printing filaments which fall under the SDGs 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and 12 (Responsible consumption and production).

The purpose of this paper is to offers the authors’ perspective on a problem rarely considered by those making strategic decisions: conflicting laws at different levels of jurisdiction, specifically those related to stigmatized products.

The authors use as examples of product categories from marijuana to single-use plastic bags, describing the conflicting laws that add to costs for marketers and consumers.

The authors find that conflicting laws add to the uncertainty, legal expenses, and therefore, the cost of marketing a stigmatized product, whether stigmatized because of its impact on the environment, on health or on moral grounds.

The examples are not exhaustive, but their implications are significant: that as state legislatures are preempting local bans, Congress may preempt state laws.

This paper adds one more complexity to decision-making in the area of products to offer and/or merger/acquisition decisions that may bring company products that face conflicting laws.