I take a refreshing walk on the South Coast cliffs on a Sunday morning, and today the birds were singing, and the sky was still pink as the sun rose over the gentle ocean waves, it was calming and invigorating at the same time, the perfect antidote to a week of screentime.

It would be perfect, except for the litter blowing around, and the overstuffed bins attracting scavenger gulls gaining sustenance from the food waste of the weekend revelers. But this is to be expected, this is a very commercial town and this is post-Saturday night, we cannot expect drunken tourists to be responsible with their rubbish now, can we?

And it is safe to say Bournemouth really is trying, positive and creative messages abound in this town to encourage the many tourists that flock to these beaches and the Christmas lights display in the Winter Gardens to put their rubbish in the bin.

FFS – for fish’s sake bins, ‘Lucky Bins’ offering the chance to make a wish when you deposit rubbish in them, and of course the wonderful disco bins that give immediate gratification, with a song when you deposit rubbish, that makes volunteer rubbish collectors of many a child.

There are signs creatively challenging smokers to choose a bin on the basis of seaside food choices – gravy on your chips? Yes or No? Flake in your ice cream? Yes or No? And you have to be a smoker to take part. The question is answered with a poll which you vote for with your butt, and the cigarette butts are visible through the transparent cover to incentivise you more. It would be interesting to see how effective they are, are smokers more likely to dispose of their butts now there are polls to dump their waste in?

Bournemouth is also embracing refill stations in an attempt to reduce plastic bottle use on the beach, an initiative with the City to Sea project, reducing plastic bottle use by making it easy to refill your own bottle with water. Reduction of at least one type of plastic for tourists is a win-win, for the Council, the environment, and for the pockets of tourists, who can save some of their holiday money.

But there is always room for improvement, when I take my morning walk I’m also taking out my trash – recycling that I cannot recycle from home as I don’t have a recycling bin provided. I’m having a chat over the next few weeks with a few coastal local authorities with the aim of making it easy to expand best practices.

If we can find the tipping point on issues we all care about these things can change rapidly – just look how the 5p plastic bag charge changed our shopping habits overnight – and reduced plastic bag use by a whopping 80% across the board. Small changes really can make a huge difference in tipping the balance.