Leave no trace - Preventing increases in litter and ASB with Friends of the Lake District

Preventing rising problems of litter and anti-social behaviour, enabling visitors to ‘leave no trace’, Keep Britain Tidy and Friends of the Lake District explore triggers and barriers to these issues

Overview & Objective

In mid-May 2020, Covid-19 lockdown measures in England were eased for the first time, allowing domestic travel for exercise to resume. This led to an increase in visitors to the Lake District National Park, which resulted in significant problems with litter and related anti-social behaviour, causing harm to the natural environment and risk to the local community.

Friends of the Lake District want to catalyse change by taking proactive steps to preventing the problem and encourage and enable visitors to ‘leave no trace’. Keep Britain Tidy’s Centre for Social Innovation set out to research the triggers and barriers surrounding this issue, in order to be able to tackle them and develop effective solutions.  

Approach 

The research was carried out in two phases; firstly - a qualitative phase of four video focus groups with 6 participants in each, followed by a quantitative phase consisting of a nationally representative survey via poll provider YouGov – which had a total sample of 608. Both phases were carried out with people who had visited the Lake District since May 2020, either for a day trip or overnight stay. Focus group participants must also have admitted to performing at least two littering/anti-social behaviours in a countryside environment since May 2020.

Outcome

• More than half (52%) of visitors say they expect to be able to find a public litter bin in the Lake District when they need one. This is equally high among litterers (54%, compared with 51% of non-litterers). Visitors are not adapting their behaviour or expectations for the more remote, National Park environment.

• 1 in 5 visitors (19%) believe it is not always possible to ‘leave no trace’ and take all rubbish and other items away with them, when visiting the Lake District. Among litterers, this increases to 40%. 

• More than 1 in 10 (13%) visitors to the Lake District in the past year believe that if they leave litter somewhere in the Lake District, someone will come by to clear it up. A third of litterers think this (33%). Some visitors believe the local council is responsible for picking litter in the National Park.

• Visitor suggested solutions were largely focused on the provision of bins and other facilities, such as providing water fountains. 

• Full recommendations made by Keep Britain Tidy can be found within the written report available here: Litter & ASB Lake District Report

Quotes

“You’re like ‘I’m not carrying this around all day’, it’s like a bag of empty sandwich wrappers and things that smell… especially on a hot day, you don’t want it on you do you?”

“When I work up in London, you’re so used to just walking along with a coffee cup and then chucking it in a bin because you’ll come across one round every street corner… if you’re not used to that, having to put that cup in your backpack to then take it home with you, you’ve not got that kind of mentality.”

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