VIBRANT STREETS
A service design project to tackle the most littered item in the world: cigarette butts.
Designing an initiative to enable smokers to be responsible for the place that they live in.
03> VIBRANT STREETS
Clients: Manchester City Council, Keep Manchester Tidy & Manchester City Co
Keep Manchester Tidy is the innovative partnership between Manchester City Co and renowned environmental charity, Keep Britain Tidy. The partnership aims to develop interventions to tackle all forms of littering across the city.
Context
The Manchester City Council was facing a huge problem with litter and set us the challenge to solve the problem of cigarette litter.
Project goal
- To reduce cigarette littering and plastic pollution caused by cigarettes.
Solution
The solution was to create a strategy to dispose of cigarettes properly and contribute to changing smokers' behaviour. This project was done as a pitch proposal to Manchester City Council and the idea was selected as the winning idea to be taken forward and implemented in the city.
Team and my role
This project was done in collaboration with Gabriel Sinico, Joudy Loo, Welyn Goh & Hannah Simpson.
My role: Service Designer, UX Researcher
Timeframe
4 weeks - Manchester UK
Secondary Research
This secondary research strived to gather data exacerbating our understanding of the problem space.
Particulars
Microplastic pollution
Cigarette filters are made of a plastic called cellulose acetate. When tossed into the environment, they dump not only that plastic but also the nicotine, heavy metals, and many other chemicals they've absorbed into the surrounding environment.
Behavioural Patterns
Pride
Princeton University Research released in 2018 about approaches towards pro-environmental supports that a positive approach creating a sense of pride (accomplishment) has higher results than creating guilt.
Behavioural Patterns
Ownership
The Government of Australia also researched approaches towards cigarette littering and discovered that Pride and Ownership had the biggest impact and the best result.
Statistics
OVERALL
6.5 Tri
Smokers around the world buy roughly 6.5 trillion cigarettes each year.
LITTERING
4.5 Tri
Worldwide, about 4.5 trillion cigarettes are littered each year.
FILTERS
2/3
Cigarette butts are the top plastic polluters, with an estimated two-thirds of the trillions of filters used each year tossed into the environment.
SMOKING RELATED LITTER
68%
According to Keep Britain Tidy research, smoking related litter is the most prevalent form of litter in England, making up 68% of all littered items and found on around 80% of surveyed sites.
MANCHESTER-UK
977,000
Today in Manchester, 977,000 cigarettes are smoked daily, and 65% of them are littered, resulting in 145kg of waste daily, accordingly to the latest reports of Smoke-free Manchester.
COSTS
£40 mi
Evidence reveals that cleaning up littered cigarette butts currently costs UK local authorities around £40 million per year.
For the business interviews, we talked with local managers and business owners, and we’ve seen that they already struggle with cigarette littering.
See the following summary, which is a result of their view on the problems around this issue:
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It's hard to keep the storefront clean.
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Employees have to clean the public area in front of their offices.
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Businesses are investing time and money in cleaning their front stores.
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The vast majority of all litter in front of the store are cigarette butts.
Business Interviews
We did observational research to better understand the behaviour of smokers in different areas of the city. And the main findings are:
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People take periodic smoking breaks on the sidewalk, in front of shops, cafes and especially offices.
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The places that people choose to smoke do not have ashtrays for the correct disposal of cigarette butts.
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The majority of smokers litter the city by throwing their cigarette butts into the street.
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Bins are hard to spot and are usually spread.
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Smokers have been pushed outdoors. It is more difficult now for them to dispose of cigarettes making it easier to 'litter'.
Observational Research
Primary Research
During the first week of primary research, we did a series of observations to understand smokers’ behavioural habits and choices when disposing of cigarette butts.
The research findings and the client brief lead us to define our problem statement:
How might we enable smokers to dispose of their cigarettes?
Understanding the Context
In 2007, indoor smoking was banned in all of the UK. This resulted in a drastic change in behaviour, as this meant that smokers now had to smoke outside, usually in front of stores.
The Manchester City Council & Keep Britain Tidy were facing a huge problem with cigarette litter.
Challenge
Manchester is on the path to becoming the first tidy city in the UK by the end of 2021. On the other hand, there is still a long way for that to happen.
What can be done to enable Manchester to become a tidy city? Could we influence litter-related behaviour?
Client Brief
Keep Manchester Tidy has been investing in new strategies to tackle cigarette litter. The fact that cigarette butts can easily wash into storm drains and eventually end up in our seas, becoming marine litter and causing broader environmental damage. So, with it in mind, the brief asks:
How can design thinking help Manchester tackle cigarette litter and become the first ‘Tidy City’ in the UK?
01. Framing the problem
How do we encourage smokers to dispose of their cigarettes properly?
Key Takeaways
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Despite the rise of the sustainability movement, the majority of young fast fashion lovers still just want cute, cheap outfits that look great on Instagram.
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Even those who are concerned by environmental issues, still want to look different every day — they don’t really want clothes that last long (like 5–10 years).
"More people will see an outfit online than they probably will in real life."
Mia J.
16 yrs/UK
Solution
Designing
In order to create a human-centered solution, we have to keep our users at the forefront of our considerations. We designed an ashtray to be positioned along business storefronts, a place that smokers currently already frequent.
Partnering with the businesses for this initiative helps maintain the cleanliness of their storefront and allows smokers to dispose of their cigarette butts properly.
Behavioural Design
Pride & Ownership
Encouraging smokers to develop a sense of pride in, and ownership of, the area as a comfortable and welcoming place for smokers, thereby creating a commitment to bin their butts.
Prototyping & Iterating
Data analysis from our research and client feedback meetings provided us with valuable insights to formulate our hypothesis, create and test the prototype.
Manager of a local F&B business
Businesses Feedback
“This is really helpful since we already spend time and money on cleaning up cigarette butts.”
Reflection
Learnings
I understood the importance of emotional intelligence to pass through different phases, adversities and moods during the process of work with a new team. Ups and downs are just fine in every project development. I learned that the process doesn’t always run smoothly but if you trust each other, create a safe place to share, build a team bond and communicate we will get there eventually. And most importantly trusting the process is key. Therefore, it is clear that it is essential to establish empathy with the user. To research, observe and understand behaviours, characteristics, motivations and needs, so designers can apply specific tools, create solutions and design meaningful experiences.
Scene
Tobacco in the UK & Cigarette Ban
Tobacco first arrived from America in the UK in the 1500s. Smoking then was social status, and smoking meant that you were part of the community. Pubs, restaurants, cafes were filled with smokers, and ashtrays were part of the decor.
In 2007 indoor smoking was banned in all of the UK. Smoking policies were made to decrease the behaviour and stop indoor smoking. Smokers now have to smoke outside, usually in front of the stores, in some corner or against a wall.
Smoking in Manchester
Tobacco Fact
Today in Manchester, 977,000 cigarettes are smoked daily, and accordingly, with the latest reports of Smoke-free Manchester, 65% of them are littered.
It is the equivalent of 8 football fields daily of cigarettes being tossed on the city's streets.
03. Develop & Deliver
Vibrant Streets
We want to provide the opportunity necessary and motivate smokers to be empowered members of their community, generating a change of behaviour towards cigarette littering.
Phase 2
Scaling
After the initiative takes off, it expands into other neighbourhoods. In places like Chinatown, the artwork on the ashtray would be representative of it, such as an oriental Chinese dragon, or for the gay village, a rainbow ashtray.
This allows for each neighbourhood to have its own unique identity and creates a sense of community and belonging among the people.
Phase 1
Introducing
This is first launched in the Northern Quarter of Manchester, and a local street artist will do the artwork commissioned for the bin. The Northern Quarter is known for its trendiness, artistic character, unique street art, and the ashtray was reflective of that.
The ashtray design needs to be easy to spot because, in observation and research, existing black bins were found to be easily missed out.
02. Discover & Define
Design Research
We used various techniques to collect meaningful and actionable information about smokers' behaviour.
The city of Manchester is frequently related to the word “vibrant”, for their warm diverse people, dynamic music, incredible football and great history. Our goal is to portray this vibrancy as the way the city is carried.
Ashtray Prototype
It was critical to test the prototype as soon as possible to prove whether or not it worked, further understand user concerns, and find potential flaws and areas for improvement. We built the prototype with a black tube, a wire and a sign. It was placed outside an office building with high traffic of smokers.
Undercover spy
We observed how people interacted with the ashtray and also had an undercover spy from the team listening to their conversations.
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We listened to comments as:
Finally, someone put an ashtray here."
I don’t know who put this here but it’s much better than throwing it on the floor."
We believe through the process Keep Britain Tidy will be able to connect artists, smokers, business owners and the community in a very unique way. We want to create in each group a sense of pride and ownership of their city beginning on one street at a time.
Overview
Keep Manchester Tidy & Manchester CityCo
Client Feedback
"We liked your ‘undercover spy’ tactic and the use of a prototype during your research. You presented an idea to tackle our largest single litter problem and gave it a city feel. We like that the product can be tailored to different areas of the city, and would showcase local artists’ work. We would like to explore this idea further with you as we think it can be implemented fairly easily without being cost-prohibitive."