Anti-Littering Irchelpark Campaign
C. Fischer: Ms. Degenhardt, why is there a need for an anti-litter campaign in Irchelpark?
B. Degenhardt: Irchelpark is a daily commute for several thousand students and employees, and it is comparatively clean. This was confirmed by about 750 park visitors who were surveyed over 119 days in 2019 as part of our initial project "Clean Irchelpark". Without the permanent cleaning work by the operating service, however, the situation would look different: We also have party littering and vandalism here. But the littering is more noticeable in the early morning, before our Irchel operations service (BDI) has made its circuit.
C. Fischer: Why did you take the initiative back then?
B. Degenhardt: Three years ago, when I had the idea for the project, it didn't look quite as good as it does today, after we had already implemented various improvement measures. Back then, freshly moved to the adjacent neighborhood, I noticed on my way to work through Irchelpark the mountains of waste from barbecues and picnics that lay on the lawn by the lake in the early morning and especially around the litter traps. As the Usage Management Campus Irchel, I work in a bridging function for the three faculties Faculty of Science (MNF), Medicine (MeF) and Veterinary Medicine (Vetsuisse) on Irchel, as well as the Directorate of Real Estate and Operations, which includes our BDI. And as a specialist in nearby outdoor recreation, I knew that littering is a classic in environmental psychology, albeit not an easy topic. But UZH trains in social and environmental psychology, and Irchelpark, like UZH, belongs to the canton. Who else but we, should try to set a good example?
C. Fischer: What role does Irchelpark play for the campus?
B. Degenhardt: As one of the largest newer parks in Switzerland, Irchelpark surrounds our campus. You could consider it something like our "front garden". Especially the many UZH employees and students as well as the population from the adjacent neighborhoods use it for recreation. The park also plays a role in teaching and environmental education. So it was obvious to me to bring the various stakeholders and in-house experts together and see how we could get a better grip on the problem together and contribute to a more sustainable use of the park for recreation and, of course, in our own interest, to a more cost-saving waste management.
C. Fischer: Mr. Tobias, as an environmental and social psychologist, you accompany the anti-litter measures of the Usage Management and BDIs as a scientific expert. What were the central challenges at the beginning of the initial project?
R. Tobias: Littering is a pervasive and global problem that poses significant financial, social and environmental problems. For this reason, a great many campaigns to reduce littering have already been carried out worldwide, and some of them have also been scientifically studied. Despite these great efforts, littering is a rather poorly understood phenomenon. This is due to the fact that it is actually a 'non-behavior' (one does not dispose of waste correctly), which one does not perform intentionally, and of which one is often not even aware. Therefore, one cannot simply ask people why they do not dispose of waste properly - they usually do not know themselves. The goal of the initial project was therefore to first understand which psychological factors influence littering and where campaigns could start accordingly.
C. Fischer: What lessons could be learned from this initial project?
R. Tobias: Perhaps the most important result is to have quantified and characterized the phenomenon of littering in Irchelpark. In fact, the first study showed that - apart from isolated 'extreme events' - littering in Irchelpark is limited. This is of course gratifying, but it made the psychological study more difficult. Since there was hardly anything to change, we could hardly determine any effects. Rather humorous, but also informative elements seemed to have the most effect. In addition, some structural suggestions for improvement could be made.
C. Fischer: Mr. Mangano, as the "man on the front lines," how do you find the park during your rounds, and how often do you have to "go out" from operations to keep Irchelpark clean?
B. Mangano: It depends on the weather and the time of year. On a normal weekday, I make my first round at 9:00 a.m., followed by a short check shortly before noon. In total, I check or clean the park three times a day.
C. Fischer: Cleaning the park is only one part of your job. Aren't conflicts with your other tasks inevitable?
B. Mangano: Fortunately, I have a competent line manager who lets me work on my own responsibility. This means that if I notice or am notified of major contamination in the park, I can go clean selectively, i.e. outside the normal round. After all, we all want to work at a clean and well-kept university.
C. Fischer: When does most waste occur?
B. Mangano: The biggest spills occur in the summer when the weather is nice, especially from Friday to Saturday. The BDI team also cleans the park on weekends. I notice another peak of pollution towards the end of each semester.
C. Fischer: To what extent had the waste behavior of park visitors already changed as a result of the measures taken? Do you see any effects?
B. Mangano: The various anti-litter posters of the "Clean Irchelpark" project had a positive effect at that time: I noticed repeatedly that older people in particular took the posters as an opportunity to point out to other park visitors that they should dispose of their waste correctly. The actual waste behavior has changed little and the quantities of waste have remained the same. Furthermore, the additional waste containers have proven their worth - especially with regard to the many pizza boxes. These are usually folded once and squeezed into the garbage bin. There they then clog up the garbage bin. The bin is then often still half-empty, yet no one can put anything in it. The large waste containers are a real improvement here.
C. Fischer: How did the findings from the initial study feed into the new campaign?
B. Degenhardt: As I said, with the application-oriented research project «Clean Irchelpark», the goal was to find out how we can best address park visitors so that litter does not fly everywhere and to identify conceivable structural offers of action and barriers. Based on this, one year later, several structural improvement measures were undertaken together with the BDI, such as better labeling of the already existing containers or the placement of new containers at points identified as neuralgic, such as the meadow by the lake. We first looked at our own noses, so to speak, and started with ourselves.
C. Fischer: What is the difference between the current «We are curious!» campaign and the initial project «Clean Irchelpark»?
B. Degenhardt: The «We are curious!» poster campaign, which we went into pilot in October 2021 and are running the main campaign this early summer 2022, goes one step further. Its aim is to motivate park visitors to literally go a few steps further themselves and throw their waste stowed in bags into the nearest empty waste container. This is because when our park animals go out at night in search of food, they tear up the paper and plastic bags next to the litter sharks and spread the waste around. This in turn causes a lot of cleanup, so it costs tax money.
R. Tobias: Exactly. The quantification of littering in the first study showed that many people bring litter to the waste disposal sites but deposit it outside the garbage cans or containers. Much of the littering that was recorded could have come from animals 'investigating' and scattering the waste so deposited. Since the information about the problem of littering in the first study already showed effects, it seemed appropriate to point out to the park users that it is not an adequate form of waste disposal to put it next to trash cans or containers, but waste must always be disposed of in the containers - or at home. Accordingly, we aimed to develop an informative poster in this sense, which conveys the information with a touch of humor.
C. Fischer: So what information exactly do you want to convey?
R. Tobias: Especially that waste deposited outside containers does not stay there but is scattered by animals. The fact that this phenomenon also occurs in urban parks was also new to me, which is why I assume that many people are not aware of it. In research on littering in urban areas, the dumping of litter in bags next to disposal points is usually not considered a problem at all, but rather an indicator of a successful anti-litter campaign. I also assume that the people who deposit waste in this way do so with the best of intentions and also go to considerable effort to collect their waste. Therefore, it would be a pity if these efforts were in vain. The campaign aims to encourage park visitors to do a little bit more so that the effort of collecting their waste is actually worth it. This campaign thus builds on the findings of the first campaign that little litter is simply left lying around in Irchelpark, but that it is often disposed of outside bins.
C. Fischer: Who finances the campaign?
B. Degenhardt: The material costs of the poster campaign are financed by the two faculties MNF and MeF. The personnel costs for the poster design and implementation in the field are borne by our specialist units Scientific Visualisation and Visual Communication, BDI, the Dean's Office MNF and the Psychology Institute of the UZH. The design and printing costs of the "Sauberer Irchelpark" project were paid by the Portfolio and Asset Management, the personnel costs in turn from the current personnel funds of the project partners involved.
R. Tobias: In addition, three internships and a Master's thesis, which the students did unpaid.
C. Fischer: Finally, what would you like park visitors to do in the future?
R. Tobias: That they keep up the momentum to keep the park clean, even if it happens that some people don't clean up. The fact that such sights catch our eye is precisely because the vast majority of park users dispose of their waste correctly. Most visitors to Irchelpark behave in an exemplary manner.
B. Mangano: I wish that more people would speak up to others when they carelessly leave their rubbish lying around or smash glass bottles. We have a beautiful park: children play here, animals live here. We have at least three fox families that raise their pups here every year.
B. Degenhardt: In my eyes, it is fortunate to have such a large natural public park as a recreational space very close to the place of education, work or residence. Numerous studies prove, for example, the significant health value of easy access to parks and near-natural landscapes in everyday life. A substantial service publique for the design and maintenance of a public space was and will always be necessary. But in my view, a certain amount of help from the citizens in the small and everyday things is also needed for this. So if, after a nice time in the park, all the waste bins and containers on the way to work or home are full, it would be nice if - just like hiking in the mountains - people took their own rubbish home and disposed of it there.
C. Fischer: Many thanks for the interview.
Photos: Benedetto Mangano.
Contact "We are curious!" campaign:
Dr. Barbara Degenhardt, barbara.degenhardt(at)uzh.ch, Nutzungsmanagement Campus Irchel UZH
Project partners
- Dr. Barbara Degenhardt, Project leadership and management, Irchel Campus Usage Management UZH
- Dorian Delon, Graphic Design, SIVIC Scientific Visualisation and Visual Communication, Zentrale Informatik UZH
- Dr. Calista Fischer, Communication consultancy, Communication, Faculty of Science UZH
- Dr. Robert Tobias, Scientific advice, Social Psychology, Department of Psychology UZH
- Daniel Zehnder, Gazmed Jonuzi, Benedetto Mangano, Stakeholders and implementation, Dienste Betriebsdienst Irchel, Direktion Immobilien und Betrieb UZH