How to conduct a litter survey at your school

Now we’re going to see how much litter there really is at your school by performing a litter survey. To do your litter survey you’re going to need:

Measuring tape

Markers for corners

Buckets (with volume marks)

Gloves

  1. Measure out your survey area (remember, it should be rectangular) and place markers at each corner. Note down the dimensions of the survey area in your table. Hint: try using round numbers (e.g. 5 metres instead of 5.23 metres) as this will make it easier to calculate the area!)


  1. Standing approximately 2 metres apart, walk from the bottom of the rectangle to the top of the rectangle and count how many pieces of litter you see, marking off whether they are:

    • microplastics (this means they are smaller than 5mm - use your measuring tape if you are not sure!)
    • soft plastics (e.g. food wrappers)
    • hard plastics (e.g. a pen lid) or,
    • non-plastic (e.g. banana peel)


3. Collect all of the litter in your survey area into a bucket. Measure the volume of the litter collected (note: this is approximate!) and record in your table.


4. Repeat for all of the survey areas you have chosen.


5. Fill in the TOTAL row by adding up the total number of pieces recorded in each column. Then calculate the number litter index (number of pieces per 1000 square metres) using the formula provided.