“A house of cluttered folk can be cleaned up, a house of tidy folk can stay clean.”

This year saw the height of the #thrashtag hype. You couldn’t go on social media for more than five minutes without coming across a post of another beach or park having been cleaned somewhere around the world. But like all internet trends it eventually fades away. While it might not have reached the status of the Ice bucket challenge, it definitely did a lot of good with probably hundreds if not thousands of kilos of thrash taken care off. Say what you want about people just doing it for social media points, this fact alone made it a great trend in my opinion. It helped clean up beaches and parks, supported local ecosystems and made the places saver for people and the wildlife. It was a fun cooperative activity that can help build friendships and communities.

Perhaps most importantly it showed us that it’s the people, the individuals, who can make a difference in the fight against climate change. It wasn’t large corporations or governments that got those places clean. It were small groups of locals who did that. Large companies aren’t the ones who can fix this problem. It isn’t the purpose they were founded on. No, it takes something more powerful than that. And as #thrashtag showed us, that this is the people themselves.

Motivation to Stay Clean

Littering is a massive problem in cities and villages around the world. It’s hard for me to even remember a time I walked through a city without seeing dozens of soda cans, plastic bottles and fast food packages laying around. If cities inherently attract thrash how come Tokyo, a city of 9 million, is known as one of the cleanest cities in the world? A place where it is normal to walk around for hours without finding a single piece of litter. Is it because the city hires great cleaners? Because they have the toughest fines for littering? Or because the people just don’t throw stuff on the ground? While the first two are good things to have, it’s this third point that makes Japan one of the cleanest countries in the world. To explain the deep integrities about how the culture of Japan causes this could be a whole book on its own. But in short, a core value of Japanese culture is to respect and take care of ones own belongings and environment including ones own thrash. Taking care of your trash is literally a cultural value of Japanese society. Which is reflected back by the clean environment and cities.

Now how does #thrashtag fit into this role of a cultural value? We all saw it become part of online discourse for quite some time. And its community aspect helps it, as communal activities have an easier time becoming part of a culture. But in the end, like all internet trends, it started to fade away. Leaving without managing to becoming a lasting part of the larger community and culture. Of course it takes more than a few months for cultural values like those in Japan to come into existence. But even if we wait for a few more years, I don’t believe that we will see #thrashtag or something similar start off on that path. Why? Simple, it’s too much of a hassle.

Not only does the act of cleaning an entire beach take time, you also have to arrange and plan everything else beforehand. You need to get cleaning supplies, find a free day in your schedule and align the planning of everyone who wants to join. This isn’t something you spontaneously do when bored on a Saturday. What we need is an alternative that can bring the same results while taking less effort of the cleaner.

Creating a habit

Fed up by constantly seeing trash around me, I decided to do something other than just be annoyed by it. My plan became to clean up one piece of litter every day. There, that is one less candy wrapper in sight. Honestly one of the reasons for starting this was to feel better about myself. Now it was possible to say I was at least trying to make a difference. Then I started to notice something. I actually was making a difference. After a few months, the streets around my house became cleaner and cleaner and even my local train station looks decent these days. Not only was I cleaning up the trash, but less thrash was being added as well.

One piece a day was all it took to get this started. The best part, it didn’t cost me any time or real effort either. No planning, no cleaning supplies, no travel time. Just every time I was walking somewhere pick up one piece of litter. Over time this one piece part of the plan fell to the side as well. If two cans are close together I will just pick up both. It’s no extra trouble for me so why not? All this came together to form a low effort habit that I have been following for almost two years now. A habit that is showing results in the outside world. And it’s this habit that I want to propose as part of the people’s plan to create a clean Earth.

Strength in Numbers

A nice proposals and all, but do the results stack up to taking the time to clean a beach for seven or eight hours? To figure out how much I was actually contributing I recorded every piece of trash I collected for a 30 day period. I have a dog that needs walks and travel from the train station to my office by foot as well. So over a normal week I take a lot of walks both short and long. The act of recording what I was picking up even got me motivated to clean up more (guess who loves showing off). All this counted up to a total of 63 pieces of litter being cleaned in 30 days.

This isn’t enough to fill a trash bag, let alone the six or seven your average #trashtag will give you. But that was never the goal anyway. Because the true strength of habits comes from repetition. Say we take 45 pieces for the average I clean each month. On a monthly basis this isn’t anything impressive. But over a year long period this already climbs up to 500 pieces of thrash.

If just one of you starts following the same low effort habit this number already jumps into the thousands. Now imagine dozens or hundreds of people all start following the same habit. This is the power of a communal habit and how this plan could eventually outperform #thrashtag. Obviously there is a pretty big “if” here. Because who knows for sure if other people actually do join in. This is why the ease of doing it is so important fro this plan. People are more likely to do something if it is easier. This is why convincing someone to join in on meatless Monday is easier than convincing them to become a vegetarian. To the point that the former can actually reduce the amount of meat consumed more than the latter can. The same could become true for ”One piece a day” and #trashtag.

These are my arguments and experience and now I want to leave you with one question. Can you pick up and throw away one piece of litter today? It can be anything, some paper, a water bottle, or a soda can. Just please don’t be stupid, so no picking up broken glass or sharp looking metal. Just one piece, nothing more and see how it feels. Who knows you might pick up a second piece tomorrow, having started a new habit with which you will help clean the world.