THE THINKING BEHIND THE DESIGN

Good intentions need somewhere to go

The psychology behind the Smartbin cigarette and gum disposal approach

1. A SMALL DECISION, MADE IN A HURRY

Imagine someone finishing a cigarette on the way to a station. They are checking the time, looking for a crossing and wondering whether they have missed their train. At that moment, we would also like them to make a considerate decision about a very small object in their hand.

That is a perfectly reasonable expectation. But the street can either help them meet it or leave them to work it out.

Can they see a suitable disposal point? Do they recognise it? Is it on their route? Does it look usable? Or does the considerate choice involve stopping, searching, turning back and carrying something they would rather put down?

None of this excuses littering. It asks a more useful design question: how much unnecessary effort have we attached to doing the right thing?

A street is full of messages. Some are printed on signs. Others are communicated by what is easy, what is visible and what appears to happen there already. A poster can ask for considerate behaviour. The physical setting determines whether there is somewhere practical for that good intention to go.

2. THE POST IS ALREADY THERE

This is where the Smartstreets approach begins: look again at the infrastructure we walk past every day.

Lamp posts and signposts already occupy places along our journeys. Suitable existing posts can also provide locations for cigarette and gum disposal. Smartstreets’ proprietary Smartbin system was developed around that opportunity.

The important idea is larger than attaching another object to a post. It is to consider a street as a sequence of decisions: where people pause, where a cigarette ends, where someone changes direction and where litter accumulates.

An isolated bin may be useful. A thoughtfully planned network asks what happens before and after that one location. Can people encounter a recognisable disposal point along the route they actually take?

The twin Smartbin configuration presents a disposal point to people approaching from either direction along the pavement. That is a physical design feature. The suggestion that it makes disposal easier to notice and use is a behavioural hypothesis worth evaluating in real streets.

We should be curious about both. Design gives us a mechanism; observation tells us whether it works as intended.

3. WILLING IS NOT THE SAME AS ABLE

It is tempting to explain every unwanted action as a shortage of motivation. If only people cared more, we think, the problem would disappear.

Sometimes motivation is exactly the problem. Sometimes the missing ingredient is much more ordinary: a practical opportunity to act.

Susan Michie, Maartje van Stralen and Robert West’s COM-B framework distinguishes capability, opportunity and motivation as conditions for behaviour. It offers a useful starting question: what is missing in this particular situation? [1]

Applied here, that means observing an actual disposal decision rather than assuming another general reminder will resolve it. Someone might need clearer information, an obvious facility or a different routine. The framework helps organise those questions; it does not predict a percentage improvement for a particular product.

For Smartstreets, the practical response is to pair communication with provision. Make the request intelligible, and give the person somewhere suitable to act on it.

A message says, “Please.” A usable disposal point adds, “Here.”

4. CONVENIENCE IS NOT JUST A MEASUREMENT IN METRES

There is a trap in treating this as a simple distance problem: install more bins and assume the behaviour will follow.

Keep New Zealand Beautiful’s published summary of its 2018 observational study reports that almost half of the littering observed occurred within five metres of a bin. That finding belongs to that study; it is not a universal statistic. But it is a useful challenge to the idea that proximity alone solves littering. [2]

The questions therefore become more interesting. Was the bin noticed? Did it look appropriate for the item? Was the person moving towards it or away from it? Was another action already habitual?

For a site assessment, these are possibilities to investigate, not explanations to assume. A circle drawn around a bin on a map cannot tell us everything about how convenient that bin feels during a journey.

This is why the setting deserves as much attention as the object. A well-made product in an overlooked location may miss the very moment it was intended to serve.

5. FIRST BE NOTICED; THEN BE UNDERSTOOD

The Behavioural Insights Team’s EAST framework offers four practical prompts: make an action easy, attractive, social and timely. Its updated guide is a useful way into the subject without requiring a psychology degree. [3]

For street design, I would translate that into four questions. Have we reduced avoidable effort? Have we helped the disposal point attract appropriate attention? What behaviour does the surrounding place communicate? And does the prompt appear when someone can act on it?

There is also a difference between attracting attention and creating visual noise. A disposal point has to live among shopfronts, traffic signs, people, bicycles and all the other things competing for our eyes.

Recognition may matter as much as novelty. Once someone understands a particular design, encountering the same appearance elsewhere could reduce the need to interpret it afresh. A planned network gives us an opportunity to test that idea.

The aim is not to turn every post into an advertisement. It is to make the intended action easier to find.

6. THE STREET IS ALREADY TELLING A STORY

Look at a clean, cared-for entrance. Then imagine the same entrance with cigarette ends gathered around its edge. Even before a sign says anything, those two scenes may suggest different expectations.

Robert Cialdini, Raymond Reno and Carl Kallgren’s work on normative conduct distinguishes what people seem to do from what people approve of doing. Their research gives us a reason to pay attention to both sorts of social information. [4]

For a litter scheme, a sensible implication is to avoid letting communication and conditions contradict one another. A request to keep a place tidy is easier to take seriously when the place is visibly maintained and the disposal facilities are usable.

That is not a claim that one dropped cigarette end inevitably causes the next. Nor should we announce that “everyone litters” merely to dramatise a problem. A scheme can explain the behaviour it wants without making the unwanted behaviour sound like the accepted local custom.

Servicing belongs in the behavioural discussion. It helps keep the physical invitation credible.

7. HABIT DOES NOT HOLD A MEETING

Many everyday actions happen without a fresh debate in our heads. We follow a familiar route, reach for a familiar object and repeat a familiar movement.

Research by Wendy Wood, David Neal and colleagues examines the role of context cues in habitual behaviour. In their 2012 experiments, strongly habitual actions were responsive to associated contexts and relatively insensitive to current goals. Those experiments were not Smartbin trials, but they help explain why an intention and an action can come apart. [5]

The design implication is to examine routines as well as opinions. Asking someone whether they disapprove of litter is useful, but it is different from observing what happens at the end of a cigarette.

A consistent disposal opportunity might help people practise a different response. Whether that response persists is a separate question, requiring follow-up rather than a confident slogan about changing habits overnight.

The street should make the better action easier to repeat. We should then check whether people repeat it.

8. AN INVITATION MAY TRAVEL FURTHER THAN A REBUKE

There is a human side to all this. People rarely enjoy being addressed as the problem before a conversation has begun.

The published IPA account of Keep Britain Tidy’s cigarette-litter campaign describes research and creative work built around an empathetic, non-judgemental approach. It reports a behavioural test comparing bins with and without campaign messaging, with better results for the branded bins. That is evidence about that campaign, not a result to borrow for another product. [6]

The observation is useful nonetheless: tone is part of the intervention. So is the relationship between the message and the available action.

For a pocket ashtray, a friendly question—“Would one of these be useful?”—offers something practical. But accepting an ashtray is not the same as using it. A useful evaluation would ask whether people carry it, understand it and use it when fixed facilities are out of reach.

For chewing gum, the specific disposal task also needs its own investigation. We should not take evidence about cigarette disposal and simply relabel it as proof about gum.

9. THE REAL PROMISE IS A SYSTEM WE CAN LEARN FROM

There is direct cigarette-litter evidence for taking a coordinated approach. The NSW Environment Protection Authority describes a 2018 trial involving 16 councils and 40 smoking sites. Across the trial, reported binning rates rose from 38% to 58%—a 20 percentage-point change. Those were results from a programme testing several strategies, not a Smartstreets product evaluation. [7]

Closer to home, Smartstreets’ published City of London case study reports a 64% reduction in smoking-related litter within a wider programme involving Smartbins, pocket ashtrays, communication and enforcement. It should be presented as a programme result, rather than an effect attributable to a bin alone. [8]

These examples encourage us to think about provision, communication and operations together. They do not give every future location the same guaranteed outcome.

A full bin is encouraging evidence of use. It cannot, on its own, tell us how much litter was prevented. Some of that material might otherwise have gone into another bin.

Count what remains on the ground. Keep the area, timing and cleaning arrangements comparable. Observe the behaviour where feasible. Record pedestrian activity and other changes that might affect the result. Include comparison locations when practical, and keep checking after the novelty has passed.

The same discipline applies to gum disposal and pocket ashtrays. Each needs measures that fit the question being asked.

10. GOOD INTENTIONS NEED SOMEWHERE TO GO

We do not need to imagine a public made up entirely of saints or entirely of careless people. We need to design for people who are distracted, busy, familiar with some places and uncertain in others.

A useful system respects that reality. It combines an intelligible request with a practical opportunity. It pays attention to the route, the moment, the direction of approach and the way the place is maintained.

Smartstreets’ contribution is its own design response to those everyday conditions: a proprietary cigarette and gum disposal system that puts suitable existing posts to additional use, supported by thoughtful placement, clear communication and dependable servicing.

The psychology does not replace the product. It explains the questions a well-designed product and scheme should answer.

Start with the places people already use. Give considerate behaviour somewhere practical to happen. Then measure what changes.

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