Get this wrong and even the “right” answer will be wrong ….

Problem statements

During a recent community meeting, the issue of merchants dumping shipping cartons around the estate’s litter bins was raised. A resident shared that this littering was because the litter bin was too small and demanded that we replace the small litter bins with the big rubbish bins for the merchants to dispose of their cartons.

To the resident, the problem statement was small bins equal littering, hence larger bins would solve the problem. While it makes intuitive sense, I was not ready to jump to that conclusion. I decided to study the problem and realised the following:

a. current regulations require merchants to dispose of shipping cartons at the bin center. In this instance, the nearest bin center was 25 metres away.

b. the majority of the merchants are disposing of shipping cartons properly. The littering is caused by a few merchants.

Based on this, I concluded that the problem statement was not small litter bins, but merchants not complying with the regulations. Besides being unsightly to have big rubbish bins all around the estate, doing so would be making the wrong behavior right. I am also certain that if we started to have the bigger rubbish bins, the other merchants will then no longer dispose of the…