Zero Butts & Litter (ZBL) is a behavior-change campaign to reduce littering of cigarette butts and other trash on campus and to raise awareness of the health and water quality impacts of cigarette butts and trash litter.
Healthy Campus and Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) – UCR CleanWater collaborated to design the ZBL campaign with additional support from University Communications based on community-based social marketing (CBSM) principles and methods. Download the Zero Butts & Litter Campaign brochure.
The following strategies were deployed during the month of April 2019:
- Public commitments - “Pledge to Never Litter” signatures were collected during campus outreach events
- Prompts/Reminders - Zero Butts & Litter stickers and water bottles giveaways during campus outreach events
- Communications with vivid, engaging messages and images
- Social norms - Housing Mascot Norm the Navel says “Be a Zero Hero!”
- Social norms - Flyer and poster designs invoke injunctive norms
- “My Trash My Responsibility”
- “Use the Right Container Every Time”
- “UCR is Going Zero Waste and Litter”
- Social norms - Flyer and poster designs invoke descriptive norms
- Images display the desired environmental condition and model the desired behavior
- Vivid, engaging images
- Stickers, flyer, posters, and a trifold brochure include images featuring the desired environmental condition and pride of place
- Flyers distributed to 24 campus departments for posting
- Posters displayed at the HUB illuminated beacons and display cases
- Information to raise awareness of health and water quality impacts of cigarette butts and litter and links to zero waste resources was distributed in a trifold brochure during campus outreach events and in the Daily Digest and Student Scotmail weekly announcement content
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Effectiveness evaluation included pre-and post-deployment assessments conducted in cigarette butt hot spots identified during the 2018 Butt Bash. Assessments were conducted before and after the April 2019 pilot. Post-deployment assessments indicate cigarette butt litter was reduced by 41%, trash litter reduced by 18%, and total litter reduced by 26%. Results for strategies deployed during the April 2019 pilot will be evaluated to inform revisions needed prior to broad-scale implementation. |