Students’ Litter Analysis leads to a Cleaner Campus, Smarter Spending and One Giant Impact

CONTEXT

Fifth grade students from Fremont Elementary saw litter piling up around their campus and wanted to do something about it, all while getting to the bottom of what was causing all the litter in the first place.

CHALLENGE

How do you quantify the impact that different sources of litter have within a campus or community?

LITTERATI SOLUTION

The students turned to Litterati in order to tag, map, and collect 1,247 pieces of litter across the campus over several days. After looking through the data, they realized that the highest concentration of litter was generated by straws and wrappers coming from the cafeteria.

CONCLUSION

Using Litterati data, the students petitioned their principal to stop buying the straws altogether. The result has been a cleaner campus—and smarter line item spending.