Drive Down Litter
Buckle up folks as we take you on a drive by of our Drive Down Litter campaign.
In 2014, Highways England estimated that it costs around £6m a year to collect litter from motorways, with more than 150,000 sacks of refuse collected annually. This averaged out at 83 bags of litter being collected from each mile of motorway every year.
More recently, figures indicate in total, the UK spends £1 billion each year cleaning up litter (Local Government Association, 2016).
Our eight-month social experiment, from June 2018 - February 2019, tested new ways to tackle motorway litter, using proven behaviour change and awareness raising techniques, with our interventions rolled out at two service stations in Kent.
It was a turbocharged collaboration, with support from the Kent Resource Partnership, Highways England, Roadchef, Shell and Costa Express, and independent impact measurement by Kings College London. The findings were shared openly to give a fresh angle to national litter campaigns.
Nudging drivers not to litter on the roads
Through Drive Down Litter, we trialled a range of interventions at Maidstone and Folkestone service stations to increase litter awareness and pride in the area, while improving infrastructure to make it easier for car and lorry drivers to bin their rubbish on the go. These included:
An art installation featuring a forest of flowers and a hedgehog made out of litter, plus facts about litter in Kent
A community gallery displayed in both service stations, featuring photos of staff holding hand-written, personalised signage with messaging about keeping the area cleaned.
Messaging: posters, vinyls, table talkers, banners
Two recycle reward machines: installed to issue a reward to customers for recycling their coffee cups and plastic bottles
New bins: two types of large, colourful roadside bins installed in both service stations:
Target bins: designed for roadside binning of litter by pedestrians and cars
RoadHog bins: designed to make it easier for lorry drivers to bin their rubbish without leaving their cab
Photos of the different interventions we tried for Drive Down Litter.
The impact
Drive Down Litter was hugely successful in attracting people’s attention, stimulating debate, and generating media coverage around the issue of litter. Litter on the adjacent on-slip roads decreased by 60% and the campaign had a big impact on both staff behaviour and attitudes.
The recycle reward machines
Successfully collected over 7,000 coffee cups and plastic bottles for recycling, despite a voucher redemption rate of 1.6%. Findings suggested that people used the machines because they wanted to ‘do the right thing’ rather than get a reward
The new roadside bins
Were deemed the most effective intervention, with 89% of staff at Maidstone and 100% of the staff at Folkestone services identifying them as being the most effective intervention for reducing litter on site
The project “massively decreased the workload on the perimeter roadways as more customers seem to be using the bins. I think all the facilities team are in agreement it has streamlined the way we work making it more efficient but also slowing down the amount of litter on the perimeter road as there are now bins more readily available” Roadchef Site Manager
The campaign had a reach of 41 million people and gained over 40 pieces of media coverage including The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent. The campaign launch also featured on ITV 1 Meridian South East, BBC South East, BBC Radio Kent and many others.
Based on the successes of this trial, Roadchef also extended the campaign to their Sandbach and Strensham service stations.
Get involved
Delve into the data further: read the Drive Down Litter impact report here
Interested in a different approach to tackling roadside litter? Check out our Tidy Roadsides campaign here
Dreaming about our Trashconverter? Check out our Love Your Forest campaign to see our trash converter in action in a different context.
