• Why Do People Litter? by Dr Jack Lewis

    Parks and open spaces improve health and quality of life by incentivising people to get out and take some exercise, which is extremely good for brain health. Just being within eye shot of some greenery can accelerate healing – so even if you can’t get outside, all you need is a room with a view! If it wasn’t for the armies of parkies and council cleaning staff who clean up after members of the public who routinely leave their litter behind, these green spaces would soon become the last place you would want to spend your spare time. The question is: why do people leave their litter behind for somebody else to clear up in the first place?

    All human behaviours are governed, more-or-less, by the brain’s predictions of reward and punishment. We are subconsciously guided towards actions that maximise rewards whilst minimising punishments. The pleasure pathways of the brain, in particular the nucleus accumbens, are involved in attaching a reward prediction to a certain course of action based on past experience. Drinking water when thirsty or eating food when hungry are examples of behaviours hardwired to produce powerful sensations of pleasure because they help to keep us alive. However the sense of pleasure that people get from putting rubbish in the bin is not innate, like drinking and eating, but instead it must be learned.


    DontMessWhen children are brought up with a strong sense of social responsibility then in later life they may get sensations of what might be called “righteous” pleasure from doing the “right thing.” The point is that to get a feeling of satisfaction from performing pro-social behaviours you must have been trained over prolonged periods of time by parents, carers, teachers and/or peers in order to get a kick out of it. If society wants to encourage pro-social behaviours we’ve either got to praise young people more for putting litter in the bin, or make them very uncomfortable when they just drop it for someone else to deal with. Or, take a leaf out of the Texan’s book. They had great success in reducing littering on the highway (after many years of failure with several different approaches) by adopting a campaign that would appeal to young men’s sense of pride and bravado (see left).


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