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This city is not a bin: Crowdmapping the distribution of urban litter
Summary
Researchers analyzed 1.7 million litter observations crowdsourced through the Litterati mapping project in the Netherlands and found that cigarette butts and food packaging were the most common litter types, with spatial distribution correlated with population density and transportation infrastructure.
Urban litter, such as cans, packaging, and cigarettes, has significant impacts, and yet little is known about its spatio-temporal distribution, with little available data. In contexts of data scarcity, crowdsourcing provides a low-cost approach to collecting a large amount of geo-referenced data. We consider 1.7 million litter observations in the Netherlands, collected by the crowdmapping project Litterati. First, we analyze the biases of this data at the province and municipality level. Second, in a local case study with high-quality data (the city of Purmerend), we investigate the spatial distribution of urban litter and the points of interest that attract it. This study's findings can support both the crowdmapping process, steer volunteers' efforts, and policy-making to tackle litter at the urban level.
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