The One Piece of Litter Challenge (And Why You Probably Won't Do It)

Your challenge this week? To pick up one piece of litter and put it in the bin. That’s it. Hey look, I told you that these challenges really wouldn’t be hard. 

Yet I bet lots of you reading this won’t do it. 

And I can’t even judge you for it. We are so deeply conditioned to think “this is someone else’s problem” or “what difference would me doing such a tiny thing make?” or even “I’m way too busy to do that”. I can understand that in the hurly burly of life bending down to pick up an, often gross, wet, dirty, item from the floor seems deeply unappealing. Or you’re just so wrapped up in your day that you don’t even notice it’s there. 

I’m not going to dream here that no one will ever litter, that would be unrealistic. Imagine though, if people just picked up any litter they saw and threw it away. We’d have clean streets. People would feel like they’d done a good thing and have a bit more spring in their step. There would be less plastic for animals to get trapped in. Everyone’s a winner. 

I’m not saying that I’m a hero who always picks up rubbish. 

I do, however, know that hero. 

This hero, who also happens to be my friend, will randomly dart off in conversation because they’ve seen something on the beach that shouldn’t be there. I swear they have the equivalent of night vision goggles for rubbish. It’s an astonishing skill. It’s also behaviour borne from a deep and genuine desire to protect the landscape and I admire it greatly.

A couple of weeks ago, we were chatting about collective action and wanting to get more involved in the local community and they said that they weren’t sure where to start. I said, if you could do anything in the world, something that brings you joy, what would it be? 

Can you guess what they said? (Almost certainly yes from the context I’ve given). 

They said they wanted to litter pick and get more people into litter picking. I said great, let’s do it, I’ll be your accountability partner. 

The next day I messaged and said, right, when are we doing this. We picked a date and decided to message a few friends about it. 

Then I went a bit overboard and made a poster and also drunkenly discussed telling Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, about it because this is so up his street, he’d looooove it. This thing is gonna be huge, baby! Now, where’s that prosecco? 

We didn’t tell Zack Polanski. We didn’t splash it all over Instagram. My own ego and need for validation had gotten the better of me. 

In the end, 5 of us met up on Sunday, most of us all friends who meet up regularly, and we walked for about an hour picking up some bits of cork, fishing rope and a worrying amount of dog shit. 

It didn’t need to be flashy or meet my fantasies of hundreds of people clad in green walking from their front doors, gathering en masse and watching the murmuration in a haze of good will and cheer.

It needed to be exactly what it was, which was a connecting, calming and wholesome afternoon doing something that made Brighton beach that little bit cleaner and more pleasant for the people who would follow in our footsteps. We also discovered that finding a piece of rubbish to pick up gives you the same dopamine hit as finding a great Instagram video, except this time it’s better because you’re not on your sofa alone and you can fight each other over who saw that bottle top first and who gets to put it in their bag. 

Hero friend taught us about fish egg cases and how to tell what kind of fish they might be from and we walked through golden hour and watched the starlings dancing (“Hey fun fact I learned, did you know that they murmurate for longer when it’s a beautiful sunset? They also want to stay out and enjoy it!”). 

And to top it all off we had a dip in the Channel in the gloaming, because honestly, nothing makes you feel more alive. Now that was a Sunday afternoon well spent. 

My point in all of this is that we create so many false barriers for ourselves when it comes to taking action. We convince ourselves that things must be perfect, or successful or have a huge impact to be worth doing. We think that one small act is pointless in the grand scheme of what’s happening in the world. Or, perhaps most tricksy of all, we think someone else will get to it eventually. 

When I first graduated from university I was a waitress for nearly a year in a busy restaurant in central London. It was intense and exhilarating and I have never regretted it for a second. It taught me a huge amount about working in a diverse team, working under pressure and, most pertinently for this topic, that there is always a full-on human being who will have to respond to your decisions for action or inaction. So often I would go into the bathroom to clean up and there would be paper towels all over the floor, just next to the bin. Sure, I was being paid to clean up and the person using the bathroom wasn’t. But I was still a human being who had to bend down and pick up their used towel. 

Sure it only took me a few seconds, but it would only have taken them a few seconds too. Our highly atomised and individualised culture means that so often we prioritise our own immediate wants and desires at the expense of someone else. 

There's something about collective action that we've forgotten in the West. When I was in Taiwan, I learned that rubbish collection is a communal event. The truck comes through playing a cheerful tune, think ice cream van but for rubbish, and everyone comes out with their bin bags to throw it in together. No one's too important for it. No one's waiting for someone else to deal with it. It's just... what you do, a part of being in community.

We've somehow convinced ourselves that we're above this kind of thing, that our time is too valuable, that it's literally someone else's job, whether that's the council or the bin men or just some other person who will spare the time when we won't.

That separation, between us and our waste, between us and the consequences of our actions, between us and the person at the other end of those consequences doesn’t actually bring us any joy at all. 

My point is threefold:

First: Small actions really do matter. Not because picking up one piece of litter will save the planet, but because every tiny choice either reinforces or challenges the systems we're stuck in. When you pick up that rubbish, you're practicing being the kind of person who takes responsibility for shared spaces. You're exercising your agency muscles.

Second: No one is coming to save us. Not the government, not some billionaire with a tech solution, not even the activists who are trying to: there's too much to do. We are the someones who need to act. Waiting for someone else to care is how we got into this mess in the first place.

Third: Even the smallest step is a win. Actually, especially the smallest step is a win, because you prove to yourself that you can do something. And once you've done one thing, the next thing becomes easier. That's how movements build: not from grand gestures, but from ordinary people doing small things together. 

So, prove me wrong. Pick up some rubbish, put it in a bin, send me a photo in the comments (or to olivia@uncommon-threads.com). I’ll make a collage (scout’s honour).  

Look, I even went first.