Why do people litter? Can’t they just use the bin?

Taking an insight into the global litter problem and its probable solutions.

Written by Zarif, Edited by Sadat & Zareen

If you didn’t know, littering is throwing trash on the floor of public spaces that pollutes the environment.

Source: Photo Captured by MBH

Take a look at the bottom left image above, it looks like even when people had access to makeshift wastebins in front of the tea/coffee stall, they chose to throw waste on the floor just beside the stall. So, why do people do this?

Recently there was a student protest in Bangladesh where the students laid down their lives to fight for truth and justice. It’s called the July Revolution of 2024. After the old government was ousted, students again came back to clean up the roads, parks and different other public spaces.

Source: Facebook Post by Aqueb Safwan Jaser (Left) and Facebook Post by Sienna Khan (Right)

They also maintained traffic for a while. You can read more in the article here: Students step up to fill the vacuum | The Daily Star. They also painted the walls with different graffiti art and paintings depicting the protest. Take a look at one of the examples below.

Source: Graffiti Art after Student Protest in Bangladesh captured by MBH

In the wall painting the artist wants all of us to sweep and wipe out all the corruption, injustice, discrimination in the country. Just like they cleaned public spaces. You can take a look at more pictures from our facebook post here: MBH Facebook Page post on graffiti wall art of July Revolution.

But take a look the park spaces now. As you would see below trash formed a garbage heap just in front of the meaningful painting that I have shared above.

Source. Trash Everywhere in the public spaces Photo Captured by MBH

It’s not just parks or streets where waste bins are ignored. Tea stalls, beaches, forests, and other tourist spots also suffer. Litter is everywhere, making the whole country look dirty. For example, the playing field in Shyamoli Park is covered with plastic bags and packets.

But why? Other than the fact that the park cleaners are not working properly after the previous government was ousted, why people aren’t really cautious on putting waste into the waste bins?

At first, we observed a few things when it comes to wastebins in public spaces. Waste bins look drastically different while having the same functionality, i.e. waste collection.

Source.: 5th and 6th photo from top left from daily star and ittefaq respectively. Rest by MBH

As you can see on the above image, there are eight types of waste bins and other the last two on the bottom right all of them look different. There isn’t any common shape, color and identifying factor between all of them. No consistent sign or writing. And in the yellow bin from the third image the signs aren’t visible because of lack of color contrast. In real life it’s a bit more noticeable compared to the image. In the 2nd image, that they’ve made a makeshift wastebin made from a basket. And for the 6th image, the interview from ittefaq shows that people can’t even identify it as a waste bin. They mistook it for an internet cable box as it was connected to an electric pole. These are just a few of at least 10 to 50 different shapes and sizes for a wastebins across the country. So, there is a huge lack of consistent ubiquitous public waste bins in Bangladesh.

So, we interviewed a few people in the park and boiled it down into a few key points. They are:

• The waste bins aren’t always accessible or visible. This makes it harder for people to put litter on the right place.
• In most cases, the waste bins are difficult to identify, and it’s not appealing enough.
• They expect cleaners or sanitation workers to clean it. Sometimes they think that, even if they litter on the street, it would be cleaned automatically.
• If the place is already littered and dirty, it invites more people to litter instead of the putting trash in waste bins. They conform to the normalization of littering.
• It’s a behavioral thing. People admit it’s wrong but there’s no incentive for them to act differently.
• There is no awareness banner present in the park.
• During our research we also observed that plastic waste management structures weren’t in place. That’s why even when people do want to recycle and collect waste they don’t know where to start processing them.

Okay now, let’s go through a bit of research to add references to back our hypotheses and also understand how littering plastic waste affects the environment and the climate.

Well, after doing a bit of digging, we’ve found multiple sources to back our hypotheses. The web article by Richard, The Psychology of Littering – What’s Going Wrong? states that littering is a behavior problem. The original study by Psychologist Robert Cialdini states that, people litter because that is the conformed behavior in that location.

Source: Research Paper by Robert Cialdini

The above chart shows that, people littered more in locations where littering was normalized. People imitate the actions of people around them. The lack of incentive and low access to trash bins makes them conform to their behavior, and they don’t actively put litter in trash bins. That results the environment to stay unclean and polluted.

This paper by Wesley Schultz also confirms that long distances to trash bins increased littering rates. It says that smokers litter more with cigarette butts or filters compared to nonsmokers. In the paper, Littering behaviour: A systematic review by Abdul Haseeb Chaudhary, stated littering to be a widespread problem that has negative consequences to society and the environment. And yet there hasn’t been enough unified research regarding the problem. More than 80% of the research was conducted on developed countries.

Conversely, clean environments discourage littering, and even a single piece of waste in an otherwise clean space reminds people not to litter. Practical ways to reduce littering include keeping spaces clean and using visible reminders, like sweeping trash into piles, to make anti-littering norms stand out.

To answer the first question, we will take the logical thoughtful road here. One of the most visible forms of pollution in the world is littering plastic waste. So, naturally public places look dirty and polluted. After that, waste piles up and up. That creates a large landfill of waste that is not recycled and that lands in rivers and oceans. And this in turn hurts the marine animals like turtles, crabs, dolphins, whales and any more just like the image I have shown you below.

Source: from article on Plastic Pollution by The Guardian (left) and Marine plastic pollution – Wikipedia (right)

Marine animals ingest plastic and that blocks their digestive tract, and they can even get entangled and die. Plastic waste is not only detrimental to the health of marine animals, but also us humans. According to Microplastics and human health – Wikipedia, plastic pollution can cause respiratory problems, to neurological problems to even cancer.

When it comes to climate change, according to Our World in Data report, 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas was released in the atmosphere in 2019 which is around 3.3 % of global carbon emissions. Scientists have found traces of plastic in the depth of Mariana Trench and plastic particles in the womb of a mother.

After going through more research, we have identified a few solutions:

• Beautification: Cleaning up existing litter can reduce littering rates.
• Universal accessible wastebins: Wastebins should look similar and should be easily accessible to people. These require complex planning and design.
• Awareness Campaigns: Promoting social norms against littering can be effective.
• Charging fines and strict recycling laws for littering can be seen as effective solution.
• Incentivized recycling practices: Offering incentive to collect and submit litter can be a great way to reduce littering. This research by Ansley Bacon‐Prue shows it’s the most effective.
• Recycling Infrastructure: Recycling should be a major part in solving the city’s landfill problem.

But what about practical real-life solutions implemented by other countries? Yeah, so let’s address the steps taken by other countries.

Germany: Deposit-Refund Systems:

Source: A look at Germany’s bottle deposit scheme – DW – 11/17/2021

Consumers pay a deposit on beverage containers and get it refunded when they return them for recycling. Read more in this article: A look at Germany’s bottle deposit scheme – DW – 11/17/2021. This impacts increased recycling rates and cleaner public spaces.

Japan: Cultural Responsibility:

Japan’s strong cultural emphasis on cleanliness and waste separation is the result of their clean environment. According to this World Economic Forum article by Charlotte Edmond, In the 1990s, strict recycling laws were introduced in Japan to manage waste effectively. Public spaces often lack bins, yet littering is minimal due to ingrained habits. Japanese people often take their rubbish home instead of disposing of it in public. It’s uncommon to walk and eat; people usually eat near vending machines or street food stalls and dispose of trash there.

Also, we should mention Singapore where heavy fines and public awareness campaigns made Singapore clean. While it’s true that littering is reduced in Singapore, dependency on waste producing materials makes increasing landfills a huge problem. That’s why Japan has introduced a biodegradable plastic to reduce landfills that we are going to talk about in detail in another blog.

 How Gamification Can Solve It?

Gamification taps into human psychology, making mundane tasks fun and rewarding. Here are a few examples how.

Gamified Waste Bins:

Source: Gamification of a Recycle Bin with Emoticons

Interactive bins with features like lights, sounds, or digital feedback make waste disposal enjoyable. It can cheer or reward points when trash is thrown correctly. For example, in the research by Jose Berengueres, they built Emoticon-Bin: A recycle bin that rewards users with smiles and sounds to increase recycling rates. The emoticon-bin increased recycling rates by a factor of 3 compared to a standard bin.

Mobile Apps and Challenges:

Source: Belgium gamifies recycling with new app | TheMayor.EU

Apps that reward users for reporting litter or participating in clean-up activities. Like in Belgium’s “De Click”: An app that rewards users with vouchers for correctly disposing of waste. Linnaeus University built a Gamified Recycling House: A new type of waste sorting facility designed to make recycling enjoyable.

Educational Games:

Source. Recycle Game (left), Grow Recycling (Right)

Some video games like Recycle Game, Grow Recycling and Garbage Gobblers teach you to sort trash like plastic, glass and electronics in separate waste bins. But they don’t actively teach you how not to litter. That is why these games aren’t going to solve the problem because it’s about behavior and active engagement. Unless you’re monitored, motivated, made aware, enforced and incentivized through repeated anti littering campaigns it’s not plausible to put an end to littering. We as researchers can try to solve it by making active engagement of people.

That’s what we’re going to talk about in our next blog. How our version of gamified wastebin works and how we can design a campaign with it. Here’s a sneak peak of our game controller.

Fig. Glimpse of the Gamified Wastebin by MBH

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Stay tuned for our next blog. Thank you for reading.

Also check out our previous content on how a telephone can be turned into a video game, Dialing into sustainability through alternative controllers.