Action Against Litter Newsletter – Issue 9
This section is a chance to get to know members of the community who are having a positive environmental impact in Thanet. If you know someone whose work should be celebrated, or if you are that person, please drop us a line at education@thanet.gov.uk.
In this issue we caught up with Dr. Randa L. Kachef, urban waste and sustainability expert, whose work and research focus on reducing environmental impacts through infrastructure, product innovation and policy change. Her research spans a variety of topics within waste reduction, particularly litter, material recovery and sewage, and is aimed at driving automatic behaviours and practices.
Tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to work in this area.
I was working in marketing for a company that focussed on restaurants, finding digital solutions to campaigns for a US chain serving comfort american food. I came to a point where I asked myself ‘what am I doing?’ I’m interested in reducing waste, and this was promoting consumerism. I found out I could do a geography masters in one year in the UK, so I moved to London to study. My dissertation was on mapping the spatial distribution of chewing gum litter. This is fascinating as it’s the only litter that doesn’t move after it’s dropped, it becomes squashed onto the ground and then is treated differently as it then becomes staining. From this research, a phd evolved on littering behavior.
What is it you find so fascinating about the study of litter?
The reaction to littering is interesting as it’s really bad, but we don’t take it seriously. We can see it, and so we are not scared of it like air pollution and water pollution. It’s like how the unseen threat in a scary movie is always more frightening when it’s not seen. Similarly, with litter, we take a lassaire faire attitude to it. We know that 80 – 90% of litter in the ocean comes from land activity, so why do we focus on where it ends up and not where it’s coming from? If there is a gas leak, we find where it’s coming from, we don’t just open a window to get rid of it, so I chose to look at litter because there has always been a focus on fixing it not understanding it. We use words with different meanings when we talk about ‘litter’; it can also mean a vehicle, it can be used as a veterinary term. There are also different repercussions for dropping things, dropping a piece of lettuce is treated differently to dropping a can, but both are still littering. It’s so open ended we have a hard time addressing it as it’s so broad; too many items bundled up into one thing.
Can you tell us a bit about some of the work you have done?
For part of my research, I put GPS trackers into water bottles and littered them intentionally to see how far they went. I was asking, “what is the influence of people on litter’s physical distribution?” In tracking bits of litter, I looked at the litter itself. Litter is more informative when it’s just the wrappers as it gives bits of information which lead to the activity leading the person to litter. A crisp packet tells us what was in the crisps, where they had been bought, how much had been spent on them, information you would not have got from the crisps themselves.
As a freelance researcher for Hubbub I consulted with councils from across the country and created litter profiles on how a street was used. It was possible to predict what litter showed up, based on the street. Urban-based pieces of litter can tell you what’s going on in someone’s head.
Not all litter is littered in the same way. Why do we not look at the subtle differences in the way people dispose of litter? Observation of people disposing of litter tells us a lot. We can observe how people will walk to the bin to put a bottle in, yet will walk back to the spot they were in to finish a cigarette and then flick the butt on the ground; there is a habit ingrained in flicking. From observation, a huge portion of people are also dropping litter unintentionally.
Do you have any thoughts on how to address the impact of litter?
I try to avoid offering the solutions. My work is in studying the processes which lead to litter creation. We produce so much stuff made to be thrown away, that to avoid the extent of littering, we need to extend producer responsibility, and put responsibility on producers for clean up in the UK. Issuing Fixed Penalty Notices is not effective, we need incentives to make producers reduce their litter impact index. The nature of litter is that it’s transportable, it goes long distances, it ends up in the ocean, it’s tenacious, it’s a threat, people get hurt by it. Producers can start by reducing the amount of what can be thrown away. Then make this less impactful, fines just make products less affordable. The water bottle caps attachment was the most ingenious litter prevention, just as the litter leash on cans in previous decades had also had a similar impact. So, smart innovative packaging and improved recyclability will help. Plastic bottle tops have more plastic in them than the bottles themselves. Now, they are made of the same plastic, so it’s possible to recycle them together.
Litter is so complex and broad, it needs to be targeted in a broad spectrum. It’s really interesting that cigarette litter is the most toxic type of litter, and filters actually make cigarettes worse for you, yet cigarette marketing companies will never admit they are not good and will never remove them. So collaborating with the NHS on anti-smoking campaigns is not only good for the environment and for health but also for littering and recycling, so it’s about asking what are our goals and how do we find that collaboration?
To read more of Randa’s research, visit the following links: