Litter In Bin Sign Emoji

🚮 is the "put litter in its place" sign, showing a stick figure dropping a piece of trash into a bin. In texting, it does double duty: literal (wayfinding to a trash can) and metaphorical ("bin this," "throw it out," dismissing a bad idea). The metaphorical use has quietly become the dominant one online.

Unicode's official name is still "Put Litter In Its Place Symbol", which is the polite British phrasing that appeared on UK council rubbish bins for decades. Emojipedia lists it as Litter in Bin Sign. On TikTok and X, it's the emoji of choice for reacting to a bad take: "🚮 this opinion" or a pull quote replied to with just 🚮.

The sign itself comes from the same 1974 AIGA/DOT symbol set that standardized airport pictograms. It was one of the original 34, designed to work on signage without words. The emoji version added to Unicode 6.0 in 2010 preserves the original stick-figure composition almost unchanged.

Gen Z turned 🚮 into a reaction emoji. A bad product launch, a misguided hot take, a misbehaving celebrity, a cringe comment, all get 🚮 in replies and QRTs. It's a tidy visual way of saying "toss it" without having to type. It's cousin to 🗑️ (wastebasket), which is more aggressive, and 💀 (skull), which laughs at the target instead of disposing of it.

Brands use 🚮 in anti-litter campaigns, especially in Singapore, the UK, and Australia, where littering fines are serious business. In those contexts the emoji reads as official and educational rather than dismissive.

On Reddit, it's used in cleanup-themed subreddits (r/TrashyTravel, r/mildlyinfuriating) and in parenting forums where people joke about kids who drop wrappers two feet from the bin. The "bin it" phrasing is a British/Australian/Commonwealth default, while Americans more often say "trash it," but the emoji crosses the dialect line.

The "Put Litter In Its Place" slogan dates to Keep Britain Tidy, a UK anti-litter campaign founded in 1954 by the Women's Institute. By the 1970s, the phrase and its stick-figure pictogram were stuck to every UK council bin and park gate.

Roger Cook and Don Shanosky picked up the concept for the 1974 AIGA/DOT symbol set. They drew a minimal stick figure arcing a scrap of trash toward a bin, then tested it against dozens of alternatives across multiple countries. The AIGA version is what ISO later standardized and what ended up in Unicode.

The emoji was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in October 2010 under its original Unicode name "Put Litter In Its Place Symbol." It was added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Codepoint U+1F6AEU+1F6AE. Shortcodes: :put_litter_in_its_place::put_litter_in_its_place: (full name) or :litter_in_bin_sign::litter_in_bin_sign: (CLDR). Most platforms display as "Litter in Bin Sign."

🚮 reads differently depending on how strict the country's anti-litter culture is. In Singapore, the Gulf states, Switzerland, and Japan, the emoji is earnest and practical: a real warning to keep streets clean. In the US, UK, and most of continental Europe, it's more often used dismissively or playfully, "bin this take," with the original wayfinding meaning fading.

Japan in particular doesn't have public bins in most areas. Japan removed most street trash cans after the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, and people simply carry their garbage home. So in Japanese social media, 🚮 sometimes reads as aspirational: the kind of thing tourists photograph because there's nowhere to put the wrapper.

Australia, New Zealand, and the UK use "bin" both as a noun and as a verb ("bin it") in everyday speech. "Bin" as "reject" is standard in British slang, which is why the emoji slid so easily into the dismissive-reaction use case.

• •Unicode's formal name for 🚮 is still "Put Litter In Its Place Symbol", a direct lift of the UK Keep Britain Tidy slogan from the 1950s.
• •Singapore first ran its Keep Singapore Clean campaign in October 1968 under Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Enforcement has never really stopped.
• •The UK's fixed penalty notice for littering is £150 but can reach £2,500 if you challenge it and lose in magistrate's court.
• •In Kamakura, Japan, littering cigarette butts or gum carries a minimum ¥1,000 ($7) fine, enforced by municipal officers in most tourist-heavy districts.
• •Keep America Beautiful's 1971 "Crying Indian" PSA starring Iron Eyes Cody became one of the most-watched advertisements in US history. It directly spawned a generation of "please bin your trash" pictograms.
• •🚮 is one of the few emojis that's more used metaphorically than literally. On X in 2024-25, about three in four uses of 🚮 in replies were dismissive reactions rather than references to real trash.
• •Australia fines littering from a moving vehicle as a separate, higher-tier offense. NSW Transport can fine up to AU$660 for a single food wrapper thrown from a car window.

• •Codepoint: U+1F6AEU+1F6AE. Part of the Transport and Map Symbols block.
• •Shortcodes: :put_litter_in_its_place::put_litter_in_its_place: on GitHub (uses the original Unicode name), or :litter_in_bin_sign::litter_in_bin_sign: (CLDR short name). Slack also supports :litter::litter:.
• •Pairs visually with U+1F6AFU+1F6AF (🚯 No Littering). Both come from the same 1974 AIGA design lineage.
• •Screen readers announce it as "litter in bin sign" or "put litter in its place symbol." In public-information UIs, treat it as directive signage rather than decorative.

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