Litter is littering the news at the moment.  That is probably a good thing; the more that litter is in our consciousness the more likely attitudes toward it will change. The Pick up Five Campaign will also bring improvement.

On the national litter scene, the government recently announced household kerbside recycling is to be standardised; that’s probably, overall, a good step towards reducing waste.  However, a missed further step was also announced by the government; it has deferred the introduction of a national container return scheme on the grounds that it would increase consumer costs at a time of high cost-of-living increases. That is definitely a backward step in terms of reducing the proportion of plastic containers in the litter stream. According to the 2022 Litter Audit by Keep NZ Beautiful, “Plastic was the most prevalent main material type found nationally with a 72.4% increase since 2019”.

Apparently, we’re doing really well  Of course, compared to Victorian times, our littering habits have improved remarkably.  No longer do households habitually throw all rubbish, including their toilet waste, into the street as they were still doing in England the 1850s. Indeed, on a scale of 1 – 7 on a Disposal Behaviour Index, a 2018 Keep New Zealand Beautiful study found that Auckland and Christchurch deserved a 6 indicating that, generally, “binning greatly exceeds littering and appropriate bin use occurs most of the time”. Wellington achieved the top score of 7 indicating minimal littering with prominent and appropriate bin use. Residents in all these cities might be surprised by these findings and could readily point to many places in their neighbourhood where such a score is frequently incorrect. 

While it may well be a further example of lies, damned lies, and statistics at play, the study concluded that the results need to be “championed as a success story across the country. New Zealanders are not frequent litterers and the evidence shows that disposal behaviour alone ought not to be the focus of future campaigns”.  

Who is doing the littering? The same study determined that we have a litter rate of 16%, which means that of all observations of disposal acts, 16% were littering while 84% of people did the right thing when disposing of items. Of the people observed littering, 25% were aged between 25 and 34 with a further 23% aged between 35 and 44. Those that were least observed littering were people aged 65 plus (5%) and people under 18 (7%).

What to do about the 16% who litter? Changing individual behaviour is a difficult task.  The fact that 84% of us appear to do the right thing with litter means that the vast majority is at least modelling the correct action.  Probably more than 84% of us recognise that the absence of litter is an incentive in itself to not litter. Given that penalties, signage and public bins already exist, more of these is unlikely to significantly reduce the 16% and, to be realistic, there will always be a small proportion of the population who will be disinclined to do the right thing with their litter for a variety of reasons.

What can we do? Perhaps the best thing we can do is encourage the 84% to do a little more modelling of the correct behaviour in the hope that it will reduce the visual prevalence of litter as well as encourage members of the 16% to change their behaviour.  To that end, let’s support the Pick Up Five Campaign.  

Pick Up Five Campaign The idea is that whenever we go outside our homes, we make an effort to pick up just 5 pieces of litter and dispose of them appropriately.  It is a simple but effective idea that already has many supporters judging by the number of daily walkers along the river who are observed picking up litter.  The numbers quickly multiply: 5000 people retrieving 5 pieces of litter each day results in 25,000 fewer pieces in the environment each day: that has to be a big improvement.

Pick up more? Mother of All Clean-Ups!  It is hard to stop at just five pieces of litter.  If you would like to make an even bigger impact, consider taking part in the Mother of All Clean-ups on Saturday, 13 May cleaning the banks of the river, the estuary and the beaches in preparation for Mother’s Day.