When is littering not littering?

As David Bowie and Mick Jagger never sang in their slightly alarming 1985 collab:
“Summer’s here and the time is right…for littering in the street.”

And yet - walk through any public space right now and you could be forgiven for thinking they did.  The moment we start to feel the sun on our backs, many of us head for the nearest green space with some picky bits and a bottle of rosé.

Sometimes, though, the bins just aren’t prepared, and we end up with horrors like this:

In my own personal behavioural taxonomy I’ve labelled this first example as litter behaviour #1 - Nearly Littering.

Rubbish placed next to a bin. Often (but not always) overflowing.

The behaviour says:
“I tried. This is basically the same as using the bin.”
It’s not vandalism. It’s a failed transaction.  

Sadly, though, that isn’t all when it comes to variations on littering behaviour.

I call litter behaviour #2 Wish-littering.
 

OK. It’s a bin. It’s just not a litter bin.

It says:

“This seems pretty much right.”

At your most optimistic, you might imagine it’s ok. And feel a bit virtuous.

#3: Posh littering.  This is a classic.

“Do you take me for the kind of person who drops my cup on the ground? No way. I put it on a shelf instead. So much easier for the cleaners.”

Carefully placed coffee cups. Neatly stacked pizza boxes.
Perched just so on a wall or ledge.  It’s littering.  But it doesn’t feel like littering to the person doing it.

#4 is an extreme variant of this. It’s Posh Tipping.

This one says:

“This broken ironing board? That dangerously malfunctioning vintage heater? Someone’s bound to want it! I’ll just leave it outside my house.”

Sometimes it might get taken. Usually not.  At which point it quietly becomes fly-tipping - with a backstory.

Which brings me to my final litter behaviour.  #5 is Oops Littering.

That pesky corner of a wrapper.

“It flew out of my hand, m’lud.”

Note the framing. It was the wrapper that did it, not me.  No intent. Perhaps even no awareness. But still part of the problem.

The interesting thing about all this?  A lot of what we’re seeing out there doesn’t feel like people not caring.  It feels like people trying, badly, to do the right thing.

And that matters.  Because if we treat all of this as the same, if we default to “people are lazy/selfish/disgusting”, we miss what’s actually going on.

Most people aren’t trying to litter.  They’re trying to not litter…and failing.

From years of working on litter and waste behaviours, one thing is consistently true.  People don’t need more telling off.  They need more help doing the right thing.

That means:

• Bins that are visible (not hidden behind a hedge)
• Bins that are clean (people avoid disgusting ones)
• Bins that are emptied (#1 is often a system failure, not just a behaviour one)
• Systems that work for bulky waste (so “posh tipping” doesn’t become actual tipping)

In other words, make the right thing easy, obvious, and possible.  Because the other thing we have learned is that shouting at people rarely works (try it with your kids if you need convincing).

The Australian “Don’t be a tosser” approach.
The New York “litterbug” framing.

They might feel satisfying.  But they don’t fix this.  Because this isn’t people rejecting the system.  It’s people bumping into a system that isn’t quite working - and improvising.

If you’re ready to understand your litterers, not just shout at them, we should talk.  We’ve been working on this topic for over 10 years, but we’re still overflowing with new ideas.