The Litter Police: A Campaign to End Littering Once and For All

Who We Are

Think twice before you go to throw that empty Tim Hortons coffee cup on the ground, cause if you do you'll have the Litter Police on your tracks!

For my social media campaign, I decided to create an Instagram account called "The Litter Police" (@the_litter_police) to raise awareness about a huge issue facing the environment - litter. Litter is one of the most preventable issues facing the environment, which is why I thought it would be a great idea to create a social media account about it. Followers of the account receive regular reminders to properly dispose of their trash, see posts about the effects of litter on the environment, and learn about their role in limiting littering.

The inspiration for this project stems from my passion for the environment. As I have said many times before, I grew up in a rural town in Niagara County and learned to care about nature from a young age. 99% of my childhood was spent running around in my backyard and exploring the dense forests and open fields of our 100 acre property. So, when I was old enough to understand the huge negative impact we as humans have had on the natural world, I felt a moral obligation to try and undo this damage. Thus, the Litter Police was born.

Content

The biggest issue I faced while making this campaign was figuring out what type of content to produce. It obviously needed to be informative, but it couldn't be boring, either. I decided there were two routes I could take - be emotional and play the heartstrings of followers, or be comedic. Due to my indecisiveness, I decided to include both types of posts. I'll talk more about my emotional posts below. As for comedy, my first attempt was an extremely cringey TikTok that reminds people to dispose of trash no matter how difficult it is to do so. The song in the background is called "Song for a Dying Planet" by Joe Walsh. While the melancholic tone of the music does not fit in too well with the comedic attempt of the video, the lyrics align very well with my mission. I have left this video below for your viewing pleasure as well as the lyrics of the song.

#stoplittering

All of my posts included #stoplittering. I used this hashtag for two reasons: one, it aligns with the goal of my campaign, and two, it has over 34 thousand posts associated with it. Why is that important? Well, within a day of making a post with that hashtag I had received around 29 profile visits. Needless to say, I have included that hashtag in every post since to try and expand on that outreach (which was effective). I have also made two posts that included tagging major companies. In one post, I called out the NFL to start an initiative to set up recycle bins outside of the stadiums to help reduce the amount of litter left after tailgates. I also tagged Waste Management in a post about proper recycling to see if they would repost it (still waiting on that to happen).

The posts on my account were mostly a result of sporadic ideas and were therefore posted at very random times. I originally planned on making posts during prime posting hours (late afternoon and into the evening), but then I realized that this would not align with my finals schedule during which time I become nocturnal. For this reason, my posts were made at random times throughout the day and night. However, the analytics show that the level of interactions with a post depended less on when they were made and more on their content. For example, the infamous TikTok received the highest activity, while my more informative (boring posts, you could say) got less activity.

About half of the posts on the account are original content (photos and videos taken and edited by me) and the other half came from websites. Making original content was important to me because that meant that I had more control over what was being produced, but this proved to be a significant challenge for me. Ideally, I wanted my account to be the same type of content over and over, similar to the types of photos below. However, if you take a look at my Instagram profile, this clearly did not become a reality. I lacked the creativity required to create this.

Instead of being uniform like this, my posts are all over the place. Some of these posts, like the TikTok, served as comedic reminders not to litter, and other posts were meant to be informative. Informative posts always had a link below them where the reader could go to find out more information about a certain topic. I made six informative posts, each one described below:

1. Animals pick up more trash than we do. This post was made to play on the heartstrings of followers and let them know that litter kills animals.

2. Gum is the second most common type of litter, and is much worse for the environment than we think it is. I was proud of this post because I feel like many people do not consider gum harmful to the environment when, in fact, it is.

3. Joyxee Island - how a man made an entire island from plastic water bottles. This was made to encourage people to find new ways to use their trash.

4. Light-bulb ornaments - again, a post made to show how people can re-purpose trash instead of throwing it away.

5. How to recycle - I know many people, include myself, aren't 100% sure on when something should be recycled or thrown out, so this post targeted that.

6. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - again, made to play on the heartstrings of followers. This really shows how huge of a problem (quite literally) litter is.

While these informative posts did not get as much engagement as I had hoped, I had a lot of fun reading them and even learned a thing or two myself!

Instagram Business Profile

Perhaps my favorite part of this project was being able to use the Instagram business profile setting. This allows me to get insight into my profile and posts way beyond what I get in a normal, private account. For example, I was able to determine that my cringey TikTok got 14 likes, reached 25 people, and was shared by two people (hopefully this number stays at two people for the sake of my dignity). This was my most popular post.

Another feature of Instagram that I took advantage of is called Stories. These are posts that only stay up for 24 hours, and you can add cool features to them that are not available for a normal post. For example, after making a regular post about proper recycling, I made a mini game show on my story called "Is it Recyclable?" to try and increase engagement. In it, I put pictures of 4 items and asked viewers to determine if they go in the recyclable bin or trash bin. At the end, I allowed viewers to share how many they got correct. I was able to see how each person responded, as well, and noticed that many people actually got questions wrong, meaning they likely dispose of these materials incorrectly at home. Hopefully they will recycle these items properly from now on!

What to do different next time

Next time I go to make a social media campaign I definitely need to plan better. I did not like the order in which I posted things, but that is because I just posted when an idea came to me. Had I planned posts out, the flow of posts would be much more coherent. I also wish I had made more of an effort to post during the day rather than at 3 in the morning, as I am sure this would have improved engagement. Lastly, I wish I had made more of an effort to reach out to try and get more of a following. There was a "promotion" feature of the Instagram business profile that I never pressed because I was insecure about the quality of some of my posts. If I had planned better, I think I would have been more confident to press that promote button.

Future Plans

The Litter Police won't rest until littering stops once and for all (that is our motto). I realize that this goal is highly unrealistic, but it is really just to show how serious we are about raising awareness about littering. Our realistic goal is try and reach as many people as possible and reduce littering as much as possible. Who knows - maybe just as someone is reading one of our posts, they are also thinking about spitting their gum out the window or tossing their empty soda on the side of the road, and our reminder stops them from doing so. Or maybe this whole initiative spirals into a community wide effort to clean the streets up from litter. It does not matter how it happens - we just want to see nature free of our trash.

As for the account, I had previously thought about handing it off to Sierra Club Niagara Group so they could use it as their official account. However, I have decided that this is probably not the best decision as I would have to abandon the Litter Police completely (change the name, erase old posts, make it more professional, etc). For this reason, I think I will try and keep the Litter Police going for as long as possible and create a second account for the Sierra Club when we meet up again. I originally wanted to use this account to plan a group to get together to pick up litter around UB, so perhaps I will do that in the future.

As for me, I do plan on getting more involved with the Sierra Club. Believe it or not, someone who followed the Litter Police actually reached out to me to tell me about an issue I might be interested in pursuing. It has to do with a building that is affecting the environmental integrity of the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge which is right down the street from my house. I am thinking about possibly picking this up over winter break and seeing if I can go anywhere with it! I'll be sure to leave updates.

Special thanks to Stephanie Sacco for providing me with the skills to run a social media campaign and inspiring me to get involved in environmental issues! I'd also like to thank all of my blog readers who have been with me since day 1 of the blog. This has been a fun experience!

If you haven't already, be sure to give @the_litter_police a follow on Instagram to see some funny content and to get reminders on how to properly dispose of trash!

Signing off for now,

~Officer Ellegate