I went viral after putting a poster on a bin. Here’s my story.
You might have noticed the tiny white stickers from single-use vape packaging appearing on the tops of bins across the country.
If you haven’t, take a look on your next stroll; overnight they’ve become as common a sight as pigeons and mullets.
Yet, no one seemed fussed or was addressing the issue aside from a couple posts on Reddit from the tokerati (see what I did there).
Single-use vapes are clearly a problem: almost eight million are purchased every week in the UK. They’re plastic, literally full of poison and now their packaging is occupying the sacrosanct British bin top.
There was clearly confusion about what the stickers even were – my mum thought apples were having a moment. Let alone the havoc being wreaked on the trypophobic.
I knew I had to step in and do something that both raised awareness and directly addressed the problem. “Mary has a litter plan” was born. I wanted to find a way to encourage vapers to dispose of their stickers responsibly, rather than sticking them on the bin.
At first I thought, what if I entered the bin and shouted at people as they inappropriately stuck stickers to it, but then it occurred to me – there was more to this than an inconvenience. If they can stick them on the bin, then why couldn’t they put them in it?
Clearly, vapers got some sort of rush out of this ritual, so I needed a thrilling idea.
My solution: posters on bins with fun games that could be played with the stickers. Using the power of gamification to encourage vapers to stick their waste on the poster all the while collaborating with other vapers to complete challenges.
The games on the posters were dot to dots; some asked vapers to cast a vote, and I created a politically driven “Stick it to the man” series.
The main vape brand behind all the stickers is called Lost Mary, so most of the posters had a Mary-centric theme. I figured why not “find Mary” with the dot-to-dots, each gradually revealing a famous Mary. I’d love to say I was selective with choosing the notable Marys, but in all honesty, I found the canon of famous but recognisable people named “Mary” quite small, so the public are getting the greatest hits.
The voting posters pitted questions like “Which Mary has bigger hands?” and I even made a politically driven “Stick it to the man” piece with portraits of Rishi and Keir, a novel way to poll the public.
I designed with bright colours in a gradient form; they don’t look too dissimilar from the kind of designs you’d expect in children’s colouring books, which is worrying, seeing as I tried to stay as close as possible to the Lost Mary vape design.
Tactically, I stuck the posters up on bins that were covered in stickers already, which are usually ones near corner shops that sold vapes.
Once the posters are full I’ll come back and remove them, disposing of the waste appropriately, or maybe keep the posters as art, a sign of current times.
So far I’ve had a few stolen, a few have filled up, and someone posted an image of one that went viral on Reddit, which showed the project is raising some awareness. Looking at the comments on the post, it’s also educating non-vapers on what the stickers are.
Single-use vapes are set to be banned, which is good news for public health, the environment and bins. Although a date hasn’t been set, so until then I'll keep putting these up and see what happens.
It’s rare to get the opportunity to leverage human behaviour in this way; vapers of different shapes, sizes, creeds and politics use the bins, so it’s interesting to see how they interact with the posters.
Who knows, maybe I’ll think of some other ways to harness the hive mind of the tokerati.
Ali Munro, creative, Amplify