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1. Introduction
There has been a rise of the word 'sustainable' used in various contexts and expressions, such as green, environmentally-friendly or eco-friendly. Most of these expressions are associated with developing countries (Khandelwal and Saxena, 2010; Minton et al., 2012). Hence, the global attention of environmental sustainability with a focus on the negative consequences towards the environment. (Holden et al., 2014; Bohner and Schlüter, 2014). The lack of environmental sustainability has led to the deliberating and conversing of solutions to extensively address the growing concerns worldwide (Greaves et al., 2013). Environmental sustainability has been executed in various ways, mainly focusing on the moral and cognitive aspect (Chan and Bishop, 2013; Greaves et al., 2013). Such as studying the behaviours associated with recycling (Goldstein et al., 2008; Bohner and Schlüter, 2014). In contrast, others focus on a more hands-on approach, such as emphasising the role of recycling or ways to implement recycling towards environmentally sustainable implementation (Oreg and Katz-Gerro, 2006; Jakovcevic and Steg, 2013).
Recycling plays a significant role in promoting environmental sustainability, as recycling is a sustainable way of re-using and processing previously used materials to effectively reduce waste sent to the landfill (Khalil et al., 2017). Recycling has mainly been adopted by developed countries such as the U.K, as seen by how they successfully increased their recycling ability to 45% of waste being recycled in 2019 (Priestley, 2020). In contrast, recycling has proven a challenge for national and local authorities in developing countries like Nigeria. With their federal government attempting and failing to tackle this problem (Otitoju, 2014). Public awareness of recycling in Nigeria is still low compared to other countries because recycling in Nigeria is still in its infancy compared to the rest of the world. It is estimated that only a fragment of the million metric tons of waste produced annually is recycled (Benson, 2020). Although the Nigerian government has recognised recycling as an effective strategy towards environmental sustainability, these practices are barely existent due to different factors such as lack of individual attitude to recycle and lack of technical resources and training at a local level to tackle the problem (Otitoju, 2014). The author further posited that there needs to be a behavioural change that will provide an initial reason or...