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A stick-figure pictogram of a person putting litter into a bin, a UK-trademarked anti-littering mark that also appears informally on packaging worldwide.
Also known as: Keep Britain Tidy man
A trademark of the UK charity Keep Britain Tidy, encouraging proper disposal of litter — unrelated to recyclability or material content, and with a genuinely disputed, unverified origin story despite its familiar appearance.
Encourages proper disposal of litter in a bin — a civic/behavioural prompt with no connection to recyclability or material content, trademarked in the UK by the charity Keep Britain Tidy.
Contexts: Packaging, Public information
Keep Britain Tidy's own account attributes the design to a 1960s US collaboration between Keep America Beautiful and the American Brewers Association, later trademarked in the UK in the 1970s — but a documented investigation found none of those organisations could produce records confirming this, leaving the true creator and creation date unverified.
Presented as a genuinely unresolved historical question, not a settled origin story.
1960s–1970s (disputed)
Is an appeal and not an instruction. It asks the reader not to drop the packaging in the street, and it makes no claim at all about whether the item is recyclable, compostable or fit for any particular bin. A packet carrying only this mark has told the reader nothing about disposal.
Contexts: Packaging, Public information
Related forms that are not treated as separate canonical symbols — see our variant rules.
Bin-and-figure variants
The figure is drawn dropping the item into a bin in most versions and simply holding it in some; neither carries a different meaning.
A simple stick-figure pictogram of a person depositing an item into a waste bin.
Both are bin pictograms: one asks a reader to dispose of packaging tidily, the other deletes a file.
Both belong to the Packaging, recycling and disposal symbols system.