Environmental Interventions for Litter Control

In 2 experiments, customers entering a grocery store were given a handbill listing specially priced items, and later the disposal locations of handbills left in the store were recorded. Exp I showed that specific disposal instructions at the bottom of the handbill prompted about 30% of 1,146 handbill recipients to use a particular trash receptacle. Of the 1,231 customers who received no antilitter message on their handbill, only 9% disposed of their handbills in 1 of 2 available trash receptacles, and this percentage did not increase when other customers received specific disposal instructions within the same time period. In Exp II the store was systematically littered on alternate days with 140 handbills. For the littered-store condition a total of 32 out of 639 handbill recipients disposed of their handbills on the floor. However, when the store was free of handbill litter, only 6 of 616 customers dropped a handbill on the floor.