Baseline research to document the world’s cigarette butt litter
CONTEXT
Philip Morris International launched a program called Our World Is Not An Ashtray with the goal to significantly reduce plastic litter from tobacco products by 2025.
Cigarette butts (CB) are one of the most littered items in the world; they’re made of cellulose acetate, a type of bioplastic, and tens of thousands of them are littered every single second. CB can take between three months and 15 years to break down when thrown away and that means they play a big role in the plastic pollution of our planet.
In this context, PMI contracted with Litterati to establish a global baseline of litter from tobacco-related products from which they plan to monitor, year after year to monitor the progress and improvements.
CHALLENGE
To estimate the total amount of CB globally and set a baseline for which progress and improvements can be measured year over year while helping PMI achieve its targeted reduction.
LITTERATI SOLUTION
Litterati developed a methodology that in different steps (1. locations identification / 2. data collection / 3. data QA & analysis / 4. city modeling) and using secondary data sets such as (population density, points of Interest, mobility data, night light & others). Litterati researchers were trained to collect the data from which we have been able to create the spatial models that can estimate the amount of plastic litter, from CB and other tobacco products, present in the streets at the city/country/global level.
The initial scope was to create the baseline in 2021, across 49 cities in 38 countries, this was carried out between February to October 2021. More than 900 km of streets have been explored by Litterati researchers and almost a million pieces of litter documented. See video here.
The result of this baseline will be the reference for PMI to measure the effectiveness of its actions aimed to reach the reduction target comparing this to the results of similar researchers that will be performed in the following years.
CONCLUSION
The significant amount of data collected by researchers and the data analysis performed by Litterati made it possible to deliver to PMI a full set of insights at the country and city level, identifying major hotspots and correlation between the presence of litter and population, mobility, demographics & points of interest (commercial and residential areas, healthcare and education facilities).
The final report of the 2021 baseline highlighted that from a category stand-point tobacco-related products are the predominant type of litter by a count of items, followed by drink litter and food litter at the second and third place respectively. However when considering weight and volume this order changes with the drink category being the top litter category.
Regarding specific items, among tobacco products litter, cigarette butts represent almost the totality of related litter. Drink litter instead has the most diverse set of litter: bottles’ caps, bottles, cups, and straws are the top three items found and regarding food litter, wrappers and packets are covering almost the totality of documented food items.
In terms of material, cellulose acetate, plastic, and paper are predominant materials used to manufacture the different types of litter found.
The research performed was a unique opportunity for Litterati to improve its AI models through an iterative machine learning process that led to a more robust and reliable ability to recognize litter items minimizing the need for human intervention.
For the “Our World Is Not an Ashtray Campaign”, Litterati received together with Philip Morris International, CARTO, and Cortexia the GWF 2021 geospatial award for the Excellence In Environmental Protection.