Cigarette butts make up roughly a third of all litter in the UK and are found on 99% of town centre streets. Cleaning them costs the City of Westminster alone around £3.8 million a year. Most anti-littering campaigns approach this with fines, signage, or moral appeals. UK sustainability charity Hubbub tried something different in 2015: it gave smokers something to vote on.
The Idea
Hubbub’s “Neat Streets” campaign launched on Villiers Street in Westminster, one of central London’s busiest and dirtiest streets, as a five-month behaviour change experiment. Among the interventions trialled was the Ballot Bin, designed in collaboration with Common Works Studio. Instead of a standard ashtray, the bin presented smokers with a question and two transparent chambers, each representing an answer. Drop your cigarette butt on one side or the other, and you have cast a vote.
The first question deployed was deliberately chosen to provoke a strong, instant opinion among the target demographic: “Who’s the best footballer in the world, Ronaldo or Messi?” Other questions followed the same playful sports-rivalry format: who would win Saturday’s London Derby, Chelsea or Arsenal; which event to watch, the Italian Grand Prix or the US Open. The questions rotated regularly and were specifically designed to appeal to young males, the demographic research identified as responsible for the majority of cigarette litter on the street.
Beyond Cigarettes
Neat Streets did not stop at ashtrays. The same campaign tackled chewing gum litter, which costs the UK roughly £56 million a year to remove and accounted for six tonnes dropped annually in London’s West End alone. Hubbub’s solution asked people to stick their used gum onto a sticker cross, and as gum accumulated, it gradually revealed a famous face hidden beneath, turning a piece of waste into the missing material for a piece of public art. The campaign drew directly on the “litter breeds litter” principle, the well-documented finding that litter accumulates faster once it starts, and is far less likely to begin in places that already look clean.
Why It Worked
The psychology is simple but precise. The Ballot Bin reframes disposal from a chore into a small act of self-expression. A smoker who might otherwise drop a butt on the pavement out of habit or indifference is instead offered a chance to register an opinion, visibly, immediately, and in competition with everyone else walking past that day. The transparent chambers let people see the running tally build in real time, turning the bin itself into a live public opinion poll.
Hubbub’s observational research during the campaign found that 29% of “correct disposals,” meaning cigarette butts placed in a bin rather than dropped on the ground, were a direct result of people using the Ballot Bin specifically, rather than a standard receptacle. Across the full five-month Villiers Street trial, litter on the street fell by 26%, with behavioural observation showing littering rates dropping 16% during the campaign period. Cigarette litter specifically, which made up 72% of all litter removed from the street during the trial, was a primary target of the intervention.
The Scale It Reached
The original Villiers Street trial was successful enough to expand. Neat Streets ran in Sutton in 2016, where cigarette litter fell 30%, and chewing gum litter fell 68%, with the Ballot Bins outside pubs specifically cutting cigarette litter by at least 80%, according to Sutton Council’s Cleansing Team. Versions ran in Manchester, Edinburgh, and Birmingham, each adapting the format to local conditions and litter types.
The Ballot Bin itself outgrew the campaign that created it. After the original installation went viral, with extensive coverage from high-profile sports accounts covering its football-themed approach, the bin underwent a full redesign for mass production by Instrument PD and launched as a standalone product through ballotbin.co.uk. Within a year, it had reached more than 12 million people through press and social media coverage and shipped to over 14 countries and 100 locations. By 2017, US nonprofit Keep America Beautiful had partnered with Hubbub to pilot the Ballot Bin across five locations in the United States as part of its national Cigarette Litter Prevention Program. A later iteration, the Big Ballot Bin, scaled the concept further, and independent evaluations in targeted cigarette litter hotspots found reductions as high as 73 to 74%.
Why It Travelled So Far
Trewin Restorick, founder and CEO of Hubbub, described the underlying philosophy behind the entire body of work: “Hubbub is seeking to create a fresh approach to fighting litter. We aim to induce behaviour change, not through punitive measures, but through fun and engaging projects that make people stop and think, and consider why they litter.”
The Ballot Bin’s success rests on a structural insight that most public health and environmental campaigns overlook. People do not need to be told that littering is bad. Hubbub’s own polling found 86% of people already think littering is disgusting. What people lack is a frictionless, even enjoyable, alternative action in the exact moment they are deciding what to do with something in their hand. The Ballot Bin does not lecture. It just gives the smoker something more interesting to do with the butt than drop it.
Campaign Name: Neat Streets / Ballot Bin
Agency Name: Common Works (Ballot Bin design)
Brand Name: Hubbub
Location: Villiers Street, Westminster, London (original trial); expanded to Sutton, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, UK; international rollout via Keep America Beautiful, USA
