In the English county of Gloucestershire, a shop owner came up with an unusual way to fight litter. She labels wrappers, bags and bottles with customers names so it is clear who threw them away. In two weeks this cut litter by 40 percent, and offenders are now barred from shopping there or sent to clean polluted areas. Yvonne Froud is so pleased she is thinking of extending the practice to adults.
The owner of a shop in England labels product wrappers with the names of the child customers in order to beat littering. In this way, the owner of a shop in the English county of Gloucestershire managed to reduce the amount of litter in the district by 40%. Inspired by the results, she plans to extend this practice to adults as well.52-year-old Yvonne Froud marks every wrapper, bag, or bottle with the buyer’s name. For the sake of the experiment, she uses a black permanent marker. After that, identifying the offender is not difficult at all. The children admit that now they are forced to throw the wrappers into the trash bin, because their names are written on them.
“Now, if we find wrappers around the village, we know who they belong to,” Froud says. Offenders are temporarily deprived of the right to shop in her store or are sent to clean up the areas they have littered.
The two-week experiment was so successful that Froud is considering applying a similar scheme to adults as well.
It should be noted that in Russia, a no less original way of combating illegal dumps was recently invented. Utility workers in Stavropol find “evidence” in the trash (for example, a postal envelope or a bill) with an address and return the garbage to the owner’s doorstep.