was a 648% increase in the share of no-cutlery orders. If applied across China, researchers found, the approach would save nearly 22 billion sets of plastic cutlery and cut 3.26 million metric tons of plastic waste. The study doesn’t cover carbon emissions, but it’s safe to say that the impact would be significant given the high-emissions cost of petrochemical production.
It’s useful to understand the origin of nudging. The concept comes from the field of behavioral economics known as nudge theory, laid out in the aptly named 2008 book by economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. Nudge theory suggests that subtle cues can encourage good human behavior without the need for coercive policies that limit choice or economic penalties that raise the cost of bad behavior.