Measuring your campaign

It’s often said that what can be measured, can be managed.

That’s why it’s important to think about how to evaluate your campaign before you launch any new interventions.

 Unlike litter, your measurement plan isn’t something you want to pick up as you go along. However, it’s key to note that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to measuring your campaign, and it’s something that should be used to inform decision making throughout the campaign and beyond.

 Why isn’t there one way of measuring?

The sheer scale, variety and diversity of litter can mean it’s hard to measure impact consistently between campaigns - even DEFRA highlighted issues with:

• Measuring litter by weight. If you measure on a rainy day, items could be wet and heavier. As you’ll see in the example below, going by weight alone could confuse what the important issue is.

• Measuring littering by count. If we measured just by the number of litter items it doesn’t tell us about a small number of large items might make a place appear more littered than a large number of small items

• Measuring only the presence or absence of litter. This does not show how long the litter has been there or how much of it is present.

To illustrate this, a 330ml glass bottle weighs 220 grams, whilst a cigarette butt weighs 0.2 grams. One glass bottle weighs the same as 1100 cigarette butts.

As a crude example, say you’ve identified a bus stop which is a litter hotspot. You decide to install a Ballot Bin.

Prior to the installation, your count collects:

• 3 glass bottles – 660 grams

• 100 cigarette butts – 20 grams

• Total weight: 680 grams

After you install the Ballot Bin, shown to reduce litter by 73%, you come back and do another count. This time you find:

• 4 bottles – 880 grams

• 27 cigarette butts – 5.4 grams

• Total weight: 885.4 grams

What does this tell us?

If we went by weight alone, we’d have recorded an increase in littering, despite the overall incidences of litter going down, and a significant decrease in cigarette butt litter. It also tell us that cigarettes aren’t the only issue that needs targeting.

This doesn’t mean measuring by weight is always a bad idea, it’s just to highlight some of the challenges of different measures and that you’ll likely need more than one way to measure your campaign.

The environmental impact of litter

Another important way of thinking about measurement, is not just the number or weight of the items, but the environmental impact of the litter.

In the Neat Streets BCP campaign, Ellipis Earth quantified the total amount of items collected, but also the total impact. This campaign was based along beaches in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, where the beaches are erosional, meaning that the waves scour tonnes of sand and debris from the beach and into the sea during overnight high tide – this means that up to 30% of the litter deposited on the beaches throughout the day is washed into the ocean where its environmental impact will be fully realised.  This meant timely collection of the waste was important, as well as helping to consider what to target.

You can see in the table below how the negative environmental impact varies across different items.

Read the full report here and read the Neat Streets case study here.

As rough guide, this how long the follow items take to decompose:

1.     Apple: 2 weeks to 2 months 

2.     Pizza box: 3-6 months 

3.     T-shirt: 6 months to 5 years 

4.     Cigarette butt: 1-5 years 

5.     Coffee cup: 20-50 years 

6.     Aluminium can: 200-500 years 

7.     Plastic bottle: 450 years to never biodegrade 

8.     Vape: hundreds of years 

9.     Glass bottle: 1 million to 1 billion years 

Quantitative method to consider  

Method	Description	Resources Required	Pros	Cons	Specific Resources Needed
Visual Assessments	Quick, informal surveys where volunteers or staff visually estimate litter levels.	Very Low	Simple, immediate, no special equipment needed	Subjective, less accurate, varies by observer	Volunteers, basic training
Photographic Surveys	Taking and analysing photos of littered areas to estimate quantity and type.	Low	Good way to track things over time	Requires camera, potential for inconsistency in photo quality. Hard to pick up small items of litter	Smartphone
Litter Counts	Counting individual pieces of litter in a designated area.	Low	Simple, straightforward, low cost	Time-consuming, not feasible for large areas	Volunteers, record sheets, tally counters
Weighing litter	Collecting litter and measuring its weight.	Medium	Accurate measurement of collected litter, detailed data	Requires weighing equipment, can be cumbersome	Collection bags, weighing scales, transportation
Regular Cleanup Events	Organising community cleanups and tracking the volume and types of litter collected.	Medium	Gets people involved and raises awareness	Coordination required	Event planning resources, collection tools, volunteers
AI Surveys	Companies like Ellipis Earth, use AI to analyse footage captured from cameras, often from bikes and cars, to scan a large area.	High	Covers large areas quickly, high-quality data	Only cost effective for large-scale campaigns	Ellipsis Earth

Qualitative Methods

In addition to the quantitative methods, qualitative methods including tracking the public perception of litter through surveys, tracking enquiries, complaints or comments on social media.