Trash Talk aiming to clean up the streets of Manchester

Manchester City Council launched a four-month anti-litter campaign today (10 June) in an effort to change littering behaviour and encourage residents to take pride in their streets.

The council reportedly spends £7.5 million every year cleaning streets and disposing of fly-tipped rubbish and clearing up litter – the equivalent of £14 per person in Manchester – and Oxford Street is one of the most littered streets in the city centre.

‘Trash Talk Oxford Street’ will implement several initiatives that were trialled in environmental change group Hubbub’s ‘Neat Streets’ piloting campaign, which tested a wide variety of anti-litter measures on Villiers Street in London last year and reduced street littering by 26 per cent. The anti-litter campaign will run from June until October.

The campaign will start off with the ‘My Street is Your Street’ campaign, which sees large posters of local people, on the railings and in windows of Oxford Street and Oxford Road, holding signs with the campaign slogan to show pride in the area and raise awareness of the people affected by litter.

Ballot-bin ashtrays, where smokers are asked to vote on customisable topics with their cigarette butts, will also be introduced as an engaging alternative to dropping them on the ground. To start, the Ballot Bin will ask street-users a vital question: ‘Will England win the European Championship –Yes or No?'. After a successful trial last year, the Ballot Bins have entered mass production, with Hubbub saying they’ve received orders from across Europe.

Litter attitudes

Recent research from Hubbub shows that people do not feel in a position to confront litter offenders:

• 57 per cent said that they would be afraid to confront people who drop litter;
• 45 per cent say they often end up clearing other peoples litter;
• 81 per cent said seeing litter on the streets in their local area makes them feel angry and frustrated.

Local businesses rally together

The Trash Talk campaign has been developed by Hubbub, though Manchester City Council, shopkeepers and local business owners from the Oxford Road and Oxford Street and local environmental regeneration charity Groundwork are also closely involved.

Borja Monasterio, General Manager of local restaurant Chilango, said: “We all loathe litter but that’s not the only reason we want to stop this blight. Litter is bad for business but it’s really hard to stop people from doing it and quite frankly I don’t feel safe enough and don’t have the time to tell people to pick up their junk when they have just thrown it onto my doorstep.”

The core funding for the campaign has come from McDonalds, INCPEN, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Costa, Lucozade Ribena Suntory, Plastics Europe and the Packaging Federation.

Innovative ways to prevent litter

Discussing the use of Neat Street techniques in Manchester, Trewin Restorick, Hubbub’s Founder and CEO, said: “The My Street is Your Street campaign will test innovative ways to prevent litter, trying new interventions for the first time in Manchester. We will introduce new ideas and best practice from around the world and we’re delighted to have brought together this unique collaboration of organisations to tackle this important issue.”

Nigel Murphy, Manchester City Council's Executive Member for Neighbourhoods, said: "Littering is a very serious issue for all major cities and we dedicate considerable resources to tackling the problem.  We know that city centre businesses share our desire to do even more and we're confident that this new partnership will result in real change, using innovative ways of focusing city centre visitors' attention on the impacts of littering."