Turn Trash into Cash with Glasgow's Exciting New Litter Lotto!

Published: 15 November 2023

People in Glasgow are invited to turn trash into cash with the launch of the city's exciting new LitterLotto.

A monthly prize of £100 is up for grabs in the city's innovative new initiative to encourage more people to bin their litter. To enter, people aged 18 and over must download the free LitterLotto app to their mobile and upload photos of themselves binning rubbish in a council street bin via the app's camera function. Each month, a prize draw will see one lucky person chosen at random win the cash prize. People can enter as many times as they like, as long as it's different litter each time being deposited into a Glasgow City Council street bin.

Putting rubbish in household waste doesn't count! Leaving litter beside or on top of a bin does not qualified and if a bin is full, please find another nearby. If a blue recycling street bin is close by, please use it for anything recyclable.

Glasgow City Council is trialling LitterLotto for a year, in partnership with Keep Scotland Beautiful, to encourage more people to develop good habits. 

As well as the monthly Glasgow cash prize, entrants will also be entered into a national draw for KSB's monthly £200 LitterLotto prize and LitterLotto's weekly £1000 UK-wide prize. Anyone aged 18 and over can enter if they bin a piece of litter in the city or submit a photo during an organised litter pick. The winners will be chosen at random by LitterLotto. Participants can also collect virtual coins which are hidden in locations around the city and which can be exchanged for prizes within the app.

Councillor Ruairi Kelly, Glasgow Convener for Neighbourhood Services, encouraged people to download the free app and get involved.

He said: "Glasgow's LitterLotto is a novel and exciting way to encourage people to bin their litter when out and about in the city. The council spends around £20million each year cleaning up litter dropped on the city streets, so anything we can do to stop people dropping it in the first place is worth trialling. This LitterLotto pilot is another string in our bow to encourage positive behavioural change and foster good habits.

"We already have around 500 Neighbourhood Improvement Volunteers who regularly do their bit to help tackle litter and a network of over 80 litter picking hubs across the city to enable people to borrow equipment to carry out litter picks in their area.

"LitterLotto is an incentive for more people to dispose of their litter responsibly, helping to keep the city clean and enabling them to be in with a chance of winning prizes."

David Landsberg, Founder of LitterLotto, said: "Myself and the LitterLotto team are delighted to welcome Scotland's biggest local authority, Glasgow City Council, to partner with us!

"If you had told me when we launched LitterLotto® that in just 18 months we'd have given away hundreds of thousands of pounds in prizes and seen over 10million pieces of litter binned through our app, I would have been blown away!

"It's thanks to Keep Scotland Beautiful, our fantastic partnering councils and the great work of their residents that we're achieving such impressive results."

Barry Fisher, Chief Executive at Keep Scotland Beautiful, said: "It's wonderful to partner with Glasgow City Council and LitterLotto and take another positive step towards tackling the litter emergency. Data from our forthcoming Scottish Litter Survey has shown that the majority of people view litter as a problem both nationally and locally.

"Everyone has a role to play as we battle the litter issue and we are determined to find new ways to engage and inspire Scotland's people to reverse the data trends.

"That is why we are delighted to be working with LitterLotto and Glasgow City Council to bring this innovative app to the city to promote behavioural change in a fun way."

The Scottish Government's National Litter and Flytipping Strategy highlights the need to ensure "individuals, communities and organisations have greater awareness of the problems caused by litter, understand their responsibilities in preventing litter and are enabled and motivated to behave responsibly."

LitterLotto is already used by local authorities in England. South Ayrshire Council in Scotland also recently joined forces with LitterLotto to encourage behavioural change in their area. KSB has been running a Scotland-wide LitterLotto draw for over a year.

Full details of Glasgow's LitterLotto can be found at www.glasgow.gov.uk/litterlotto

Download the free LitterLotto app from the App store and Google Play to participate and be in with a chance of turning trash into cash.