What if ‘Fly-tipping’ is a Service Design problem?

What if fly-tipping is a Service Design problem? In 2024/25, local authorities in England dealt with 1.26 million incidents of fly-tipping, an increase of 9% on the previous year. For councils, tackling fly-tipping is a stubborn and complex challenge. It isn't simply about catching people or persuading them to behave better. Councils are trying to understand why people dump waste illegally in the first place, while balancing limited resources, increasing waste amounts, changing behaviours and the user needs of an entire city! The usual responses are familiar: more bins, bigger fines, more signs and cameras. But what if we looked at the problem differently? What if, at certain moments, the services around people make doing the right thing confusing, difficult, expensive or inconvenient? And what if service design could help us re-imagine those moments? – We're taking on the challenge! For this Service Designers Connect meet-up, we're teaming up with James Denham, Jim Lowe and Claire Knight from Nottingham City Council to tackle fly-tipping head-on. This isn't a hypothetical design challenge. It's a real problem affecting the city we live in, and we're going to put our service design skills to work on it. We'll go beyond mapping service touchpoints to understand the people, places, behaviours and circumstances that shape what happens. We'll ask: What happens when someone needs to get rid of something? What choices do they have? What makes the right thing easy – or difficult? Where are the frustrations, barriers and moments of opportunity? And what might cause someone to choose illegal dumping instead? Using personas, place-based experiences, journey mapping and behavioural insight, we'll explore the problem from different perspectives before turning what we discover into practical interventions the council could test and learn from. – Why this matters Service Designers Connect is committed to giving something back to the local community through Service Design. So rather than simply 'talking' about service design, we're going to 'do' it, to tackle a real challenge facing Nottingham. The aim isn't to solve fly-tipping in one evening. It's to give Nottingham City Council new perspectives, fresh ideas and practical interventions they can take away, explore and potentially test. And who knows? Something created in the room might just make a difference on the streets of Nottingham. – Who should come along? You might be a student, academic, designer, researcher, strategist, council employee or simply someone who cares about making the city a better place. All you need is curiosity, an open mind and a willingness to work with others on a genuinely difficult problem. – No Service Design or fly-tipping expertise required! Just come ready to challenge assumptions, explore a problem from a human perspective and be prepared to get your hands dirty! As always, there'll be drinks, sandwhiches and plenty of time to connect with other curious and like-minded people. 🎫 Places are free but limited, book yours and help us tackle the challenge of fly-tipping. DEFRA Fly-tipping statistics for England, 2024 to 2025 –– Other interesting links! How do you stop fly-tipping and littering? The National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group The Waste Tip (University of Manchester) Research report examining the root causes of fly tipping, including inequalities, infrastructure, and prevention-focused approaches rather than enforcement alone.