We at Rubbish Walks are rather fond of statistics. All of the cans, glass bottles, and plastic bottles we find gets recorded* and we now have three months worth of brands. This lets us see what types of beverages are getting littered frequently around Chippenham, as well as the most popular brands. With this type of evidence, we’re hoping that anti-litter organisations like Clean Up Britain can convince these companies to focus on the problem caused by their packaging.
So what have we found in Chippenham since January?
Cans are the most common recyclable to be littered. They form 48% of the recycling found (845 items). This is followed by plastic bottles at 39% (684 items) and glass bottles at 12% (225 items).
This breaks down as follows:
- Sodas: 25%
- Alcohol: 24%
- Energy Drinks: 16%
- Unknown Type:14%**
- Sports Drinks: 9%
- Fruit Drinks: 5%
- Milk Drinks: 4%
- Water: 3%
Stay tuned to the blog over the next few weeks to see what brands we’re finding in each of these categories.
* Why just the recycling? Collecting rubbish requires one hand for the litter picker and one for the bag – we simply don’t have enough hands to record on the go. As a result, the general rubbish gets bagged and binned at the end of the walk. Recycling needs to be separated anyway, so this is what we’re concentrating on at the moment. If the app-based litter recorder is successful, we may be able to have a more thorough record in the future.
** Unknown recycling are typically plastic and glass bottles that have lost their labels. In addition to making it difficult to record, these stray labels increase the amount of litter within our communities.
