Key Principles

Reduction should be priority

Endlessly picking up litter is time-consuming, expensive and a waste of limited resources. Much better to tackle the issue up stream by preventing litter from being created in the first place.

Develop insight

It’s important to understand your audience and the problem before you try to tackle it. Spend time understanding who you are trying to engage with and what their barriers, motivations and attitudes are. Get feedback from local groups. This will help you make the use of the time and resources available and have greater impact.

Try different things

Behaviour change is about helping people to be people both willing and able to do the right thing. Having the right bin in the right place for starters.

Then, engaging messaging, installations, rewards, incentives, interactive bins to capture attention, educate and influence. Binning doesn’t have to be boring and a bit of creativity goes a long way.

Keep it positive

Despite the frustration felt by seeing litter, it’s important to resist messaging with the finger-wagging approach. Focus on positive messaging that encourages people to do the right thing. We found in our Neat Streets BCP campaign that negative messaging led to a 10% increase in littering.

More carrot, less stick. More for fish’s sakes, less... well, you get the idea!

Collaborate with others

Tackling litter isn’t a solo sport. We’ve found it’s best to work in collaboration with local stakeholders from the start of the campaign and have different voices provide guidance. This helps ensure a sense of local ownership and makes it more likely the campaign will have longevity.

Measure your campaign

Measuring the impact of your litter campaign is crucial for understanding its effectiveness. It’s often said that what can be measured, can be managed.  By collecting data on litter reduction and community engagement you can see what works and what doesn't.

This helps you focus your effort, develop new learnings and understand where to adjust the campaign, as well as demonstrate the impact to others.