Introduction to Behavioral Economics and the Litter Problem
Announcer: You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast, where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brainy friendly. Now here’s your host, Melina Palmer.
Melina Palmer: Hello, everyone. my name is Melina Palmer, and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Have you ever been deeply passionate about something you know matters, but struggled to get other people to care enough to actually do something about it? Maybe it’s a sustainability initiative, a new process at work, an enhanced experience you’re trying to implement with your customers, or even getting your kids to do their chores. You know, it’s important. You can clearly see the benefits. And yet getting people to change their behavior can feel surprisingly difficult.
So how do you get people to buy in? That question is at the heart of today’s episode. Because today’s guest looked at one of the most visible behavior problems in the world, litter, and decided to tackle the massive problem of getting people everywhere to properly throw away and sort their garbage every single time. It’s something cities, companies and organizations have been trying to solve for decades. And instead of asking how to convince people to care more, he approached the problem from a completely different behavioral angle, which you’ll hear all about during today’s conversation, which originally aired at the end of 2019 and has absolutely been one of my very favorite case studies. If you’ve heard me give a talk or read one of my books or listened to various episodes of the show, you’ve potentially heard me talk about The Littery because it is such a great way where people just get it right.
We’ve all tried and understand how difficult it can be to get people to throw things away. And this behavioral shift, this brainy idea, is so, so powerful. And I love being able to reshare the full story here of what has happened with The Littery and how it came to be. So I’m super excited for you to hear the story behind it. As you listen, keep this question in mind: When you’re trying to change behavior, are you focusing on the message you want people to hear or the motivation that will actually move them to act really quickly? Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch, and more. It’s all within the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com/574.
Introducing Michael Manniche and The Littery
Melina Palmer: Now let’s jump right in. Michael Manniche, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
Michael Manniche: Thank you, Melina. Nice being here.
Melina Palmer: Absolutely. So I’m so, so excited to talk with you today. As I said in the intro, I learned about you through the behavioral economics group on LinkedIn, which I think now has almost 40,000 followers. People within that group. And someone had shared an article about what you were doing, and I think the competition that you were in. And I was just amazed. I’m so excited about it. And so I sent you a connection request and a message saying, this is maybe a little bit weird, but would you be willing—you don’t know me, but would you be willing to talk to me? So, thankfully you were willing to talk to me, and we can share about what you’re doing at The Littery. So I would love if you can just give some background about the company and how it came about for the audience listening.
Michael Manniche: Yeah. Thank you. I guess I’m kind of weird, too, that I get intrigued when someone reaches out from the other side of the world with that kind of question that you did. So it was a good way of doing it, I guess. My company is called The Littery, and it’s actually in the name. We have the problem and we have the solution. So, the first thing I invented was the name, because “The Littery,” if you look it up, it’s a word that doesn’t exist anywhere. But now it exists. So what we’re doing is I have, basically as long as I can remember, been quite annoyed—and it has increased the older I get—about people’s behavior when it comes to litter. And the reason behind my frustration is because I think it’s totally unnecessary. Mostly there are always litter bins only a few steps away. So it seems so unnecessary.
And at some point, some years back, I came up with an idea because I understood that this is a behavior problem. I mean, before there were humans on Earth, you couldn’t find litter. So it’s us creating it, obviously. So I came up with the idea: maybe since it’s a behavioral problem or basically an attitudinal problem—we have an attitude that litter is just trash, whatever, it doesn’t matter—if we change the attitude to litter, the behavior change would follow. That was my idea, and what would be strong enough?
Because I know that there have been a lot of these organizations. In America, you have Keep America Beautiful. I’m from Sweden; we have a similar organization. When I was young, in the 70s, I learned in school about how you shouldn’t litter, you should go to the bin, it’s bad for the environment. But if you look at my generation and the next generation, we all learned that in school, but the problem has not gone away. Education only doesn’t seem to work. It’s probably good because if we didn’t have education, I don’t want to think about how the streets or oceans would look, but it’s not helping as much as it has to.
So then I came up with the lottery thing. Lotteries have been around for 4,000 years, starting in China. It’s a proven business model that works on all humans because it taps into the greed in us. If there is money in something, people get excited. So I thought maybe I could turn all litter into lottery tickets. Because you don’t mistreat lottery tickets. If you imagine a scratch card that is still unused, you wouldn’t throw it away.
Testing the Concept: The Movie Theater Case Study
Melina Palmer: Right. Finding the way the brain naturally is triggered can actually change behavior incredibly easily without a lot of effort. To show just how well this works, I want you to share the movie theater example.
Michael Manniche: Yeah, I would like to do that. What we can change quite easily is the attitude. If the attitude is that litter is just trash, it has no value. But if the environment facilitated a system that turned it into gold, so to speak, that changes things. When we tested the concept in Sweden, we used a cinema chain. After every movie, when they light up the theater, you find so much litter and popcorn in the rows. It’s one of the worst places because people feel they have a “license to litter” because they paid for a ticket.
We chose four theaters in a city called Malmö. It’s very multicultural, with 181 nationalities. I wanted to check if it mattered where you came from. We had volunteers from the environmental program at Malmö University measure how much litter was left on the floor versus how much ended up in the bins and was correctly sorted. After a month of measuring “normal” behavior, we started the test. Usually, staff ask people to put litter in the bins. We changed only the end of that pitch: “If you do that, you will get a lottery ticket with a first prize of €5,000.”
The results were totally amazing. One hundred percent of the litter in those theaters ended up in the bins, compared to 71% in the reference group. When it came to sorting, 100% was correctly sorted, compared to only 23% in the reference group. People were holding onto their trash like it was valuable! Women were even opening their purses looking for extra receipts to throw away because you got one ticket per piece of litter. Men were running around the rows looking for any missed litter to pick up.
There was a machinist who had worked there for 36 years who told me before we started, “Michael, people are like pigs. It won’t work.” After the first night of the test, his mouth was agape. He couldn’t believe what he saw. That was proof enough for me to quit my old career and start this company.
How the Smart Bins and AI Work
Melina Palmer: It’s a wonderful system. How does the technology actually work for the user?
Michael Manniche: We have built a very intelligent system. The bins are solar-powered and stand-alone. You download our app, but once you’ve done that, you can keep your phone in your pocket. As soon as you open the hopper of our bin, it recognizes your phone via a beacon and addresses a lottery ticket to your account.
Inside the bin, we have a camera that uses artificial intelligence and computer vision. It can see the difference between a PET bottle, a cigarette butt, or a metal can. If you throw paper into a plastic bin, you’ll get a notification saying, “Thank you for hitting the bin, but it was the wrong one this time, so no ticket. Hit the paper bin next time for your reward!” People learn super fast.
I was very naive about AI at first. I thought I could just use pictures from the internet. But you have to train the AI with material in the same lighting and conditions as the camera inside the bin. We’ve solved those things now. The AI also prevents cheating. If you throw a stone in, the AI sees it “belongs to nature” and won’t grant a ticket. Even if the AI misses it, every ticket is connected to the image of what was thrown in. We check the winning tickets manually before publishing to ensure no one cheated with a stone or a leaf.
Current Status, Funding, and Global Expansion
Melina Palmer: So where are you now in the process, and what is on the horizon for The Littery?
Michael Manniche: We incorporated in Latvia because of our investors—one is Latvian state-owned and the other is a Swedish global waste collection company. We have the technology at a working prototype stage. Our next phase is a pilot in a city called Issy-les-Moulineaux in the Paris area.
Our business model is to take over the municipal contracts for litter removal. Instead of using that money only for human labor to pick up trash after the fact, we use the revenue to finance the smart bins and the prize money. We have partnerships with Suez, a large French waste management company, and even Coca-Cola.
Also, 10% of all winnings paid out go to an NGO, like the World Wildlife Fund. Users can even choose to have 100% of their potential winnings go to a charity of their choice. We are currently raising the final funding to start this pilot in the first quarter of 2020. I’ve recently met with the mayors of Paris, Bristol, and Los Angeles. They understand that this could help their cities a great deal.
Final Thoughts on Behavioral Triggers
Melina Palmer: This lesson applies far beyond litter. It’s about motivating the behavioral shift you need. Michael, do you have any final thoughts?
Michael Manniche: It is so interesting how the human species, with the right triggers and framework, will go where we are supposed to go. We aren’t trying to change 100% of humanity. Some people already do the right thing, and some will never care. But if we can push the big middle group to be more like the perfect group by using these incentives, we solve the problem. In some countries with high unemployment, this could be a total game changer. As our slogan says: “When litter hits the bins, everybody wins.”
Melina Palmer: That’s the perfect ending. Michael, thank you so much for joining me.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.
