curbing littering in NYC ideas

How about the use of self enforcing protocols to curb NYC litter?

The store receipt was invented primarily as an economic incentive against cash register theft [2]. If you do not get the receipt, your purchase is free. I saw this on Bruce Schneier's blog [2] . Similarly the cake cutting protocol [1] is another example of a self enforcing mechanism.

NYC Subways already have the "If you see something, say something" signs, asking customers to be the eyes and ears for everyone else. However, you really have no incentive to say something if you see something. Who cares? There is no economic incentive anyway. If someone is doing something strange, you can just get away from there. Who cares about everyone else?

But how about economic incentives? For example, what if returning old metrocards back to vending machines gave you a free fare or even just an extr a $0.05 off. Wouldn't you submit it to the vending machine as opposed to throwing it away?

The cool thing I noticed in Munich was the use of glassware even for "fast food" stands outside. You can't throw that stuff out, so there's no litter. Usually, you pay a small deposit on the beer stein ( maß glas ) and the value of the deposit is large enough so as to offset people stealing. Maybe we can't get Dunkin Donuts to start selling coffee in permanent containers, but Starbucks has filled up my coffee in containers I brought to them many times over. The incentive is a few cents off the cup actually. Pathmark also takes $ 0.02 off for every plastic bag you offset using your own bags. These are all ways to reduce the trash which may end up in the street.

Vigilante garbage collection. Well, I am curious to find out if the $0.05 value you can redeem from most plastic / aluminum bottles the result of someone's idea in the same direction of recycling. People essentially collect these bottles from all over the city to deposit them for the cash. This saves recycler fees of sorting all of those bottles out of the mixed trash piles and it guarantees part of the recycling rate ( what ratio of recyclables do get recycled ) .

But how about the every day person. Can we be vigilantes too ? Well I think street cleaning as a form of community service is a great idea when it comes to alternatives to jail time. The chain gangs in Arizona ( pink underwear ) are definitely part of an exaggeration, however.






References
[1] http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/value-self-enforcing-protocols-081009

[2] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/aligning_intere.html