Ep54: Mark Boulet, Sustainability Educator and Behavioural Researcher

Today my guest is Mark Boulet, a Sustainability Educator and Behavioural Researcher, working at BehaviourWorks Australia at Monash University. Mark reflects on his early interest, study, and work related to zoology, animals, and wildlife which led to further interest and activities in environmental and sustainability community education. Mark offers insights into his teaching approach, which emphasises active and dynamic student-led pedagogies. In relation to his research activities, Mark outlines how, to tackle a complex problem and create change, it’s often best to start with human behaviour, and to look for relevant influencers, motivators, biases, and other factors that might encourage, or stop, people from acting. Mark outlines how he and his colleagues design their behaviour change programs - in collaboration with government, not-for-profit, business, and other groups - to solve environmental problems and challenges. We explore how the research team use human psychology and behaviour change to reduce household food waste by taking the time to understand behaviour from another person’s perspective. Finally, we explore some straight-forward strategies in this territory, such as the recently launched “Use It Up” tape by OzHarvest, and simply looking in your fridge before you go to the shops, writing yourself a shopping list and sticking to it. Mark’s aims are to ensure we, as a society, have processes in place for a healthy and sustainable future. Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-boulet-78a65846/ https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/ https://www.ozharvest.org/ https://www.behaviourworksaustralia.org/