Talking to strangers about their garbage

IGSU is the Swiss interest group against littering. Every year it sends small teams of ambassadors into cities across the country to do the least scalable thing imaginable: talk to people, one at a time, about what ends up on the ground.

For a season, that was me. We walked through Swiss cities, struck up conversations with whoever would stop, and ran workshops in schools where the topic lands best, with kids who still call things unfair out loud.

Here’s what nobody tells you about cold-approaching strangers on the street: the message is the easy part. The hard part is the first four seconds, where the other person decides whether you’re a nuisance or a human. You learn to read posture at ten metres, to open with something that isn’t a script, and to accept a brush-off with enough grace that the next person, who watched it happen, still stops.

What I took home

Tone is a skill, and the street is its gym. Nobody owes you attention; you earn it with warmth and brevity or you don’t get it. Years later, in sales calls and stakeholder meetings, I still recognise the moment from the street: the four seconds where the other side decides what you are. I’ve been grateful for the reps ever since.

And yes, I still pick up other people’s bottles. The habit outlived the season.

Cover photo: National Park Service, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.jpg); cropped.