A Gloucestershire, UK shopkeeper has found a partial solution to the tragedy of the commons: de-commodifying the village children’s litter. It helps that her community is small enough that she knows most of the kids by name (and that they don’t have many other options for their snack food needs when she cuts them off). In this video clip, she says that the litterers she catches nearly always prefer 10 minutes of trash pickup to a multiday candy ban
A village shopkeeper is marking sweet wrappers and drinks bottles with the names of children who buy them in a bid to discourage them from littering.Yvonne Froud, 52, took action after becoming fed up with the rubbish collecting in Joys Green in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire….Mrs Froud said if named wrappers were found on the streets, she had a chat to the “offender” who was temporarily banned from the shop or asked to pick up some litter as a consequence
from “Store owner takes on litterbugs,” BBC News, 19 March 2009 :: via NYTimes.com Freakonomics Blog