The Seasonality of Litter Data

Exploring the Litterati Database for data between January 1st, 2021 to December 31st 2021

This week we are taking a look back at the Litter Data collected by our global community in 2021. In just two simple line charts, we are able to show the importance of Litter Composition.

Litter count per month in 2021

Chart A shows the total amount of litter recorded throughout each month between January 1st and December 31st, 2021.

In this chart, we see two peeks coinciding with Earth Day in April and World Cleanup Day in September. This chart shows us the expected results and is not too surprising.

Litter count per month by top category in 2021

The picture in Chart B, however, looks very different when we take a look at litter data by the top four categories: Smoking, Drink, Food, and Personal Hygiene.

Here we see that Smoking Related Litter (e.g. Cigarette Butts, Cigarette Packs, and Lighters) exhibits a unique pattern from the rest of the dataset with a significant spike during the summer months in the Northern Hemisphere.

Finally, in Chart C, we take a deeper look into the amount of Smoking-Related Litter per Month by Continent. In this chart, we can see that this spike takes place primarily in Europe.

What does this tell us?

At the very least, it is clear that the European contingent of our community is attuned to and likely concerned by the presence of smoking-related litter during the summer months. Systematic research ought to be conducted with the Litterati ANALYZE platform in order to create a baseline and to identify geostatistical hotspots of smoking-related litter in European cities in the summer.

To learn more about Litterati ANALYZE, click here .