A pioneering pilot led by independent environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy has demonstrated how sustained behaviour change activity can improve both the physical environment and people’s perceptions of their local area – delivering cleaner streets, stronger community pride and renewed economic confidence without putting additional pressure on council budgets.
The 12-month “Love Where You Live Heckmondwike” programme, funded through the Litter Pact and delivered in collaboration with KFC, Mars Wrigley, McDonald’s and Nestlé, achieved a 16% reduction in food and drink-related litter – providing robust, real-world evidence of what works at community level.
Keep Britain Tidy
In 2024, Keep Britain Tidy embarked on a project with the aim of pulling together all the research, insights, interventions and approaches the charity had delivered in the previous decade and see if it could make a measurable difference to the levels of litter on the ground and, importantly, to people’s reported behaviour and perceptions of the place they called home. Key results include:
- 16% reduction in food and drink packaging litter overall;
- 20% reduction in confectionery litter;
- 52% reduction in littering around ‘Bin it for Good’ installations – where bins are converted into charity tins;
- A 22-percentage-point increase in public satisfaction with cleanliness (rising from 14% to 36%).
The initiative highlights the critical role that shaping consumer behaviour can play in addressing environmental challenges, beyond packaging design and recycling infrastructure.
The programme also saw a significant reduction in those who perceived fast food litter to be a problem between the beginning and end of the project, with the number of people saying it was a problem falling from 86% to 42%.
The pilot also underscores the commercial relevance of tackling litter with 16% of businesses in the area saying customers would spend more in cleaner areas and 30% believing that improved cleanliness would attract new businesses.
