Better Streets - Reducing fly-tipping by 67% in Newham

Reducing fly-tipping by an average of 67% with Newham’s ‘Better Streets’ programme.

Overview & Objective

Following our research to better understand household fly-tipping behaviour, Keep Britain Tidy worked with Newham Council and its residents to co-design a pioneering programme of behaviour change pilots to tackle fly-tipping. In Newham alone, fly-tipping costs the Council £3million every year to clear up.

Prior to the pilot, as is the case in many local authorities, fly-tipping was cleared with no feedback to residents that the behaviour was incorrect and in fact, illegal.

Better Streets had three aims: to reduce the number of fly-tipping incidents; to educate and inform residents about fly-tipping and its impact; to measure the impact of each element of the programme with a view to expanding successful initiatives across the borough.

Approach

For the Better Streets programme, our award-winning Centre for Social Innovation reviewed our existing research into fly-tipping, including research with fly-tippers, and worked with residents to co-design solutions.

The programme included a pilot of a ‘crime scene investigation tape’ intervention, where fly-tips were highlighted with bright yellow tape and left in place for several days.

We also trialled our innovative ‘social impact stencils’ intervention. This involved using chalk based paint to stencil the ground each time a fly-tip with a message about the costs and impacts of fly-tipping. The aim of the intervention was to highlight that fly-tips don’t just simply disappear, but have lasting effects on the community.

Other interventions piloted included pop-up community “Love Your Ward Weekends”, an “Empowering Children in Schools” education pilot and an innovative “No Waste on Streets” pilot on highstreets, aiming to remove all waste, legitimate or otherwise from high street locations.

Outcome

The ‘crime scene investigation’ pilot resulted in an average 64% reduction in fly-tipping incidents, with over half of residents reporting they had noticed the intervention. Less than 1% displacement was recorded on neighbouring streets.
Overall our pilots resulted in a 67% drop in fly-tipping incidents from the baseline to monitoring period. Furthermore, neighbouring streets saw reductions of up to 47% suggesting that the intervention had a positive “knock-on” effect in surrounding areas.
Newham has gone on to replicate the approach in other areas of the borough, with two thirds of sites delivering an average 42% reduction in fly-tipping.
Keep Britain Tidy now offers support and advice to local authorities who want to implement either of these tested behavioural interventions including training of operational staff, hot-spot identification, communications tools and resource kits.

Quotes

“This work with partners and residents shows real change can be made to improve the borough by working together.” - Newham Council’s Cabinet Lead for Environment, Highways and Sustainable Transport, Cllr James Asser.

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