Tackling litter starts with understanding how it gets there

Sustainable materials management is the holistic notion for material stewardship that can be summed up succinctly as: use wisely, eliminate toxicity and recover more. This simplified look at material consumption provides us with a framework for examining materials used in society, including packaging material flows. As society grapples with material recovery and recycling from the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream, part of the story often overlooked is litter—the fraction of materials, often packaging, that end up in unintended places.

How much do we actually know about litter? What do we know about its composition; its magnitude in relation to material flow within the MSW stream; the psychology and the demographics of the people involved in the transactions; how does litter fit within the sustainable materials management framework?

Litter as a collection of transactions is quite complex and the ways in which deposited items end up in places other than the trash bin are many. The composition of litter is quite diverse and context specific, and the environmental implications vary. These discards can clog waterways, create hazardous conditions and even contribute to the waste gyres in the oceans.

Reviewing a 2006 study of roadway edge litter in the state of Georgia provides a window into the constituents of the litter and a profile of the litterer. While this likely doesn’t represent the nation, it offers a useful lens to look through. The collected litter was characterized as either deliberate or negligent litter. Deliberate litter referred to items likely to be tossed intentionally and made up approximately 34 percent of the total, while negligent litter referred to items that ended up as litter due to carelessness in storage or disposal and made up approximately 66 percent of the total.

Deliberate litter was made up of the usual packaging suspects: snack food and on-the-go food service items like cups, lids, bottles, cans, bags and napkins, while negligent litter consisted of larger paper, plastic and metal items.

So, who are the litterbugs?

They could be all of us, intentionally or accidentally, yet age seems to play a strong role in the determining action. For example, deliberate littering seems to be most prevalent in the 11 to 24 year-old age group. For more information, visit Responsive Management’s public opinion surveys on recycling and litter and other natural resource issues. 

Litter is part of the bigger conversation about Sustainable Material Management that GreenBlue pursues with its work with various industries and via the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. The problem of waste handling is a complex one in itself, but the problem of litter is equally challenging in terms of behavior. Some of the behavioral problems associated with litter are likely to be similar worldwide to what we see here in the U.S., while others may be unique to cultural context. The challenge is in understanding the individual behavioral transactions that lead to a larger pattern. The distributed nature of litter makes it difficult to capture data in a centralized manner. However, modern technologies built into most cell phones can help by harnessing GPS-enabled cameras to capture package type, brand, quantity and location to start to piece together a larger picture.

For example, take the efforts of Litterati to clean up the planet one piece of litter at a time. In the age of big data and ease of participation, learning the intricacies of the various pathways packaging takes to become litter could help a brand by reducing the stigma of its product packaging being portrayed as trash. Brands motivated to find ways to reduce the amount of their packaging that becomes litter would simultaneously help the larger community and global concerns of uncontrolled litter in the waterways and oceans. Learning the ins and outs of how products and packaging becomes litter would help brands, governments and organizations develop the right solutions to keep both deliberate and negligent litter at bay. Producers can help by targeting their stewardship messaging to the appropriate demographics and reinforce ongoing brand-loyalty building efforts.

Author Minal Mistry is senior manager of sustainability solutions at GreenBlue and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. For additional information, visit www.sustainablepackaging.org.