Roadside litter campaign
Roadside litter is not a new problem, our beautiful country has been blighted by roadside litter for some time. We know that roadside litter poses a real threat to Scotland’s, already depleted, wildlife, it can pollute waterways, as well as an enormous expense to the public purse through costly and dangerous clean ups.
- 91% agree roadside litter creates a negative impression of Scotland
- 88% think roadside litter is a problem, rising from 69% in 2016
Additionally, in our policy priorities for the next Scottish Parliament we have called for an investment of at least half a million pounds to help raise awareness of and reduce roadside litter via a national campaign across the next parliamentary term – to which 85% of people asked supported.
Roadside Reports
We have been working to tackle this issue for as long as we have been a registered Scottish charity – a found member of the Scottish Transport Litter Group, we led a number of collaborative attempts to drive action to tackle the issue. We secured funding from a number of sources to deliver campaigns and test interventions including:
Give Your Litter A Lift
Our Give Your Litter a Lift campaign ran from 2016-2019 and encouraged all road users in Scotland to respect our shared environment and do one simple thing to keep litter off our roads. Read our report
A9 Intervention
Keep Scotland Beautiful developed the A9 Roadside Litter intervention with partners as part of the National Litter and Flytipping Strategy Year 2 Action Plan (2024/2025). Together we sought to test the effectiveness of different communication messages and channels to address roadside litter. Read our report
Engagement with young people
As part of our roadside litter campaign, we invited schools across Scotland to help design a banner asking everyone to Give Your Litter A Lift. We had an incredible response and a very difficult time choosing a winner between lots of amazing designs. The winning design for the nursery-P3 category was LL from Corpus Christi Primary with the see it? lift it design and the winning design from the p4-7 category was EH from Doonfoot Primary with the Waste Wipes out Widelife deign. The two winning designs will be made into physical banners that can be used to remind everyone to keep litter off our roadsides.
No single organisation can solve the problem, it is only collaboration across sectors that will deliver the results we all want to see. Currently, Keep Scotland Beautiful is working with partners to deploy targeted behaviour-based interventions in three locations across Scotland, the A1, A801 and A90 Forfar Road.
We are calling for collaboration to drive forward a five-year roadmap to tackle roadside litter. We aim to:
- Create a collaborative coalition of organsiations to reduce roadside litter in Scotland.
- Continue to deliver interventions and test messages to create effective behaviour change campaigns.
- Increase knowledge transfer and good practice between coalition members and communities.
Roadside Blogs
Work with us to test and share our campaign materials, supporting behaviour change in your communities.
We support the 