No littering sign at a highway in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Picture by wikipedia user: Z22
Littering is the classic environmental problem that plagues cities, getting onto roads, falling into storm drains, and being eaten by domestic and wild animals alike. Littering is something that most people are familiar with, because no one wants to be a litterbug. Littering is defined as waste products that have been disposed of improperly, without consent, at an inappropriate location. It may have been something the cool kids did years ago, but it has huge environmental and economic impacts. Thankfully, we have made huge strides in reduction to litter today. For example, Keep America Beautiful’s Great American Cleanup, which marked it’s 21st year in 2019, engages more than 3.4 million volunteers. Being apart of a big organization that is making big changes in the environment and in societal norms, can be rewarding for the individual and their community. We can thank social norms for some of the reductions in littering today.
Even computers can be litter. Photo from: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/697691
Littering is the grandfather of social norms and environmental issues coming together. In my last post, I linked to a video of kids in Hawaii wanting to phase out single use plastics, because they end up littering their beach. So littering is still an issue today, but it has drastically improved. There is still a lot to study and a lot of unanswered variables about littering. A study in 2011 discovered that “For smokers, the observed littering rate for cigarette butts was 65%. Results from the general littering observations showed that of all the disposal behaviors observed, 17% resulted in litter.”(Littering in Context: Personal and Environmental Predictors of Littering Behavior) Thankfully today, smoking cigarettes is not as common. And there are still more disposal sites for cigarette butts than there was decades ago.
Photo from wikipedia. Members of the Coast Guard 313 Port Security Unit pick up litter along the road outside Joint Task Force Guantanamo
So what do we do about littering? It’s the social norm today to avoid littering and to sort your waste into the appropriate bin (landfill, compost, recycling). But how do we ensure these messages continue to be passed on to future generations? Anti-littering messages and free litter bags aren’t effective enough. (The Experimental Control of Littering) Well, one study focused on how to reduce children littering, and it’s surprisingly simple. “Paying the children 10 cents or giving them a free ticket to a special movie for turning in their litter resulted in over 90% of their litter being returned”(Reducing Children’s Littering on a Nature Trail). If you make it fun or into a game, young kids will get in on picking up litter. For example, Keep Columbus Beautiful aims to eliminate roadside trash by educating the city’s youngest residents and empowering them to create change. So positive social reinforcement gets kids to adhere to more effect social norms when it comes to littering. By teaching young children the impacts of littering, they will see it is as important for the rest of their lives. And they can teach it to their parents, if it’s something that wasn’t taught to them!
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