The app that went from Instagram trash to cleaning up the world

In Mashable’s series Wasted, we dig into the myriad ways we’re trashing our planet. Because it’s time to sober up.

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A global problem requires a global solution. A little bit of collaborative fun thrown in the mix doesn’t hurt, either. 

Say hello to Litterati, a free app that both encourages users to pick up litter and to share their efforts with likeminded individuals. But the app does more than just provide a nudge to tidy up. Behind the profile pics, photo galleries, and cheery campaigns announcing participants’ intention to clean up their neighborhoods lies a secret weapon: crowdsourced data.

By aggregating massive amounts of information detailing what type of litter people pick up, and where and when they do so, Litterati paints a wholistic picture of how trash exists in and permeates throughout our cities. This, in turn, allows for a compelling case to be made to fast food chains, individual businesses, and even elementary schools that environmentally focused change is both desirable and beneficial. 

Essentially, Litterati poses the question what if slacktivism actually, well, had just a touch more activism in it? And here’s the thing: It’s working. 

Unlikely places

It all started with a tub of cat litter in a stream.

Jeff Kirschner was hiking with his two children along Oakland’s Sausal Creek in the summer of 2012 when the trio stumbled across the out-of-place trash. The garbage was likely dumped in the creek, which drains into the San Francisco Bay, and Kirschner’s young daughter quickly said out loud what he was thinking — that doesn’t belong there. 

It was that moment, Kirschner explained over video chat with Mashable, combined with a childhood memory of his own involving a group effort to pick up litter at summer camp, that provided the inspiration for what came next. 

He began by snapping pictures of discarded cigarette butts, candy bar wrappers, and disposable coffee cups spotted in the neighborhoods where he lived and worked. Kirschner posted the images to Instagram with the Litterati hashtag, and, after a conversation with the students of a class he was teaching on storytelling, noticed others started following suit. 

When he saw a photo of litter taken from the Great Wall of China, he realized there was suddenly the possibility of a global community. 

Kirschner didn’t know it at the time, but he was in the first stages of a journey that would occupy the next seven years of his life. In the process, Litterati would grow from a passion of one to a worldwide campaign coordinated via app that aims to tackle litter a single piece at a time

“Individually you can make a difference,” Kirschner emphasized over the call. “Together is where we create the impact.” 

Beyond Instagram

Litterati may have started out as a series of Instagram posts on Kirschner’s personal account, but it didn’t stay that way for long. He launched a dedicated Litterati account, and then an iOS app on Earth Day in 2016. The Android app followed a year later. 

Fast forward to today, and the Litterati app has 150,000 downloads and a decidedly outsized impact. Getting there, however, took both online and offline work. 

“At the core, what we are talking about is behavioral change,” observed Kirschner. “I started my career in advertising — I know how hard it is just to get someone to switch toothpaste, or buy a different type of jeans. But to get someone to pick up a piece of trash that they aren’t necessarily responsible for?”

It’s a challenge, but one that Litterati has had success in tackling — and the app can prove it. 

Just ask a Hollander by the name of Dirk Groot. According to Kirschner, Groot decided to do something about all the Anta Flu wrappers he kept seeing littered about the city. Litter from the cough drop, made by the company Pervasco, was particularly troubling because it consisted of plastic wrappers. 

So Groot organized a group via the Litterati app, and together they cleaned up almost 30,000 wrappers. What’s more, they took the data generated via the app to Pervasco and the company agreed to change the supply chain. 

Going forward, wrappers would be made with paper. 

“Our North Star, our ‘why,’ is to eradicate litter,” continued Kirschner. “And we believe strategically the way to do that is you need three Ps. You need policy, right? Government has to play a role. You need packaging — we need more sustainable materials. And you need personal responsibility.”

Groot’s work, in Kirschner’s mind, is a perfect example of this. 

“We believe the best way to do this at scale is to build a global community that is crowdsource cleaning the planet, but [also] generating all this data because that data can really shape the first two parts,” explained Kirschner. “It can help influence policy, it can help inspire packaging.”

As a case in San Francisco demonstrates, it can also generate revenue. According to the company, its data was used to defend a tax on cigarettes that funded the cleanup of littered cigarette butts.  

“Litterati’s technology was used to identify and map 5,000 pieces of litter across a random sampling of 32 specified areas — unbiased data showing exactly how much city litter was generated from cigarettes,” notes the Litterati website. 

This hard data helped the city double the existing sales tax — bringing in an additional $4 million in annual revenue. 

More to come

Kirschner views his work with Litterati as a lifetime calling, noting that “it’s a lot easier to get up for a purpose than just a paycheck.” 

What’s more, he insists, the app’s best days are ahead.

In addition to being in the early stages of a pilot campaign with a national company that he asked Mashable not to name, over the next six to 12 months Kirschner and his team are going all in on building out the app. Much like Fitbit users can count their steps, Kirschner wants Litterati users to be able to “quantify the positive impact they’re having on the planet.”

This means, according to Kirschner, “delivering on the front-end a delightful, simple experience, and on the back-end one that is sophisticated.”

It is the combination of these two that would seem to offer the largest impact. If you can create social media or internet virality around activism, and strategically use the data generated by that activism to further drive environmental reforms, then the possibility of a positive feedback loop becomes real. 

“It’s taking that quiet, isolated act and making it social and sharable,” Kirschner said of Litterati. “And now that feeling of overwhelm transforms into one of inspiration.” 

If Kirschner’s correct, then a little inspiration can go a long way. Here’s hoping he’s right.