Creativity at work: Litterati

While most of what we discuss on GITS is screenwriting, the fact is if you are a creative person, your creativity likely doesn’t stop with your stories. Case in point, Jeff Kirschner. I met Jeff several years ago in one of my online screenwriting classes. A talented writer and terrific guy, we have become friends. Jeff is a creative individual who lives in the Bay Area and makes a livelihood by coming up with ideas and turning them into reality — Silicon Valley style.

Jeff’s latest creative inspiration is something called Litterati.

Here is Jeff telling the story behind its genesis:

I was pushing my two kids in a double-stroller through the Oakland hills, and as we rolled alongside a winding creek, my daughter noticed a plastic tub of kitty litter in the water.

“Daddeeeeee,” she said in a puzzled voice. “That doesn’t go there.”

Sure, I’d seen litter before. But that moment, witnessed through a child’s eyes, opened mine. I began to notice litter everywhere: sidewalks, streets, and playgrounds. And I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, a place that prides itself on being eco-conscious and environmentally friendly.

Then I remembered a lesson I learned as a kid at summer camp. Just before our parents visited, our camp director would instruct each of us to pick up five pieces of trash. 200 kids x 5 pieces per kid = a cleaner camp.

So why not apply that same crowd-sourced model to the entire planet? And leverage technology to do it.

That’s when Litterati was born. The vision is a litter-free world. Here’s how it works.

1. Find a piece of litter.

2. Photograph it with Instagram.

3. Add the hashtag “#litterati”

4. Throw away the litter.

At first it was just me. Each day I’d photograph ten pieces of litter. I found that Instagram’s artistic element made finding trash rather enjoyable. Dare I say, some of the photos are even beautiful. I also realized that I was documenting my personal impact on cleaning the earth.

Pretty soon, more folks began participating and started contributing to the Digital Landfill — a photo gallery of all the litter that had been picked up and properly disposed of or recycled. Coffee cups, soda cans, plastic bags, and worse. A small, yet ever-growing community had quickly gathered a sizable haul.

And with GPS, images of the picked-up litter appear on a global map displaying how we are truly all connected.

Trends began to emerge, revealing which items and brands all too often end up as litter. It also became evident which neighborhoods get littered again and again.

It’s powerful information that could lead to change. After all, people don’t want their community littered. A solution could be as simple as a well-placed trash can. Certainly businesses don’t want their brands synonymous with litter — maybe there are changes they could make.

First, it’s our turn. Look for litter, snap a photo, and become part of the solution.

Join the Litterati. Our planet will thank you.

My interest in the environment is a longstanding one [I produced a cable TV series about eco-friendly lifestyles], so I would be happy to promote Litterati anyway. But again per my point above, if you are creative, it’s important to explore your inspirations no matter where they take you. Screenplays, novels, TV, short stories or non-writing related activities like coming up with ideas to help make our Earth a better place in which to live like Jeff did.

Here is the Litterati website.

Here is the Litterati Facebook page.

Here is a blog post about Litterati.

Here are Jeff’s bullet points about the initiative:

Regarding Story

• It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a screenplay, launching a product, or building a grassroots movement, it always come back to the story.
• In my opinion, there are two reasons that Litterati makes for a strong story: “rootability” and empathy.
• Rootability — Everyone can rally behind a cleaner planet. It’s a cause worth supporting.
• Empathy — Everyone can relate. This issue affects us all.

Vision & Strategy

• By using Instagram, I tried taking a unique approach to an age-old problem.
• The vision of Litterati is “a litter-free planet”. To reach this ambitious goal, the strategy is to take a simultaneous “bottom-up & top-down approach.”
• Bottom-up: Whether through intrinsic motivation or external incentives and rewards, we motivate people to play their individual part and pick up litter. One piece at a time.
• Top-down: Leveraging the data provided by our photos, we create solutions that prevent the litter from reaching the ground in the first place (ie; using the geo-data we can understand more about where litter is emerging, and be more strategic about the placement of trash cans and recycling bins. Or, work with the most commonly littered brands (Starbucks, Frito-Lay) to reward consumers for picking up their litter.
• Even a little engagement can create a massive impact.
• We crowdsource everything else, why not crowdsource clean the planet?
• Right now, if you pick up a piece of litter, the experience ends the moment you throw it away. And it probably makes you feel good. Litterati provides an opportunity to extend that experience beyond just that moment in time. It creates a platform for recognition, reward, and incentive.
• In the end, it’s really about creating awareness. We’ve become desensitized to the world around us. Perhaps Litterati can make us pay a bit more attention.

Litterati is in start-up phase, so if you want to support the nascent creative efforts of a screenwriter to help our planet, why not spread the word? There’s some creative juju in it for you!

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