Lack of Ownership for CampusSense of ownership greatly impacts the treatment of a given subject. The implementation of creating ownership for students on campus would assist in the elimination of intentional littering. To establish a greater sense of ownership to a large collective like a university campus, it would be most influential to present littering behaviours at prideful events. As stated, “promoting and modeling desired behaviours at major events” such as homecoming are crucial to success (Indiana edu pg.7). In conjunction with using slogans involving the desired collective action with ownership to personalize behaviours, for instance “Bison’s Never Litter” and “Litter Free UM” (Indiana edu pg.7).
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Influencing and Adopting BehavioursWhen looking at influencing and adopting behaviours it focuses on people sanctioning their own actions through descriptive norms. People endorsing the social norm of littering by adding their own litter and cooperating, because someone before them has already littered, is a descriptive norm. For example, people will not paint graffiti in a clean space but are more inclined to paint graffiti somewhere that is already dirty; the same is seen through littering. (Lyndhurst, 25)
To change these behaviours, there needs to be a change in mentality in the general student body. The best attempt would be to try and change the descriptive norm as a whole, by turning it into a group initiative to throw out trash. “Experimental research by Cialdini (1990) demonstrated that littering behaviour is significantly affected by the state of the local environment: people are less likely to litter in a cleaner environment and more likely to litter in a dirty environment” (Lyndhurst 26). Present Litter Present litter on campus is the focus we have on the most notable forms of litter seen throughout North America and campuses. The most prevalent type of litters on campus is cigarette butts and disposable coffee cups. The largest discarded type of litter around the globe is cigarette butts at an estimated 1.69 billion pounds of waste per year (Americans for Non-Smokers Rights) and UBC reports that over half the litter on their campus is composed of cigarette butts. (University of British Columbia) |
Responsibility for Cleaning UpA large constituent for litter on campus is a lack of responsibility for people to clean up after themselves. Students and staff, alike, have come to an understanding that if they do not clean up after themselves that someone else will do it for them. This is evident in a number of popular smoking areas on campus. Cigarette butts cover a small area that students have adopted as a smoking area. It has become normalized in these areas through the actions of other students, as they are aware someone else will clean up after them.
The lack of responsibility stems from “table litter.” Table litter is when people excuse their trash left on tables because they believe that someone else will clean it up for them. This still poses an issue in persuading people to litter as they see the dirty area and find it acceptable to leave the area dirty. This is a continued view of the influencing and adopting behaviours seen on campus, continuing the issue with litter even further. |
Awareness of RecyclablesA leading reason, demonstrated in the causes of littering urges the misunderstanding of what is defined as garbage, and what is known to be a recyclable. Lack of awareness, as it occurs in many circumstances, pressures the solutions that are most convenient to the individual: In this case, disposing an unknown recyclable in the garbage. Behaviours such as these, appear to be dismissive of what is correct yet, the confusion of what should be recycled adapts alternative habits of treating recycle as garbage (Knussen and Yule pg.2). The analysis provided from the environment and behaviours study, compared “measures of habitual behaviour between past recycling behaviours and the endorsement of “I’m not in the habit of doing it” resulted in participants being able to interpret recyclables in sections of glass, aluminum and paper, but not the assortments of plastics (Knussen and Yule pg.5). In the interest of creating a litter free campus, awareness of recyclables is vital in order to provide the fundamental behavioural habits of eliminating litter among the student body.
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