We assess if survey of containers discarded by people (and collected within environmental cleanup actions) may be an useful method in detection of small mammal species and how different parameters of containers affect mammal mortality. The discarded containers without stoppers were collected from two sites (one forest and one agricultural) in western Poland. In 13 bottles (out of 288 collected containers), 58 specimens belonging to 10 species were found. Remains were found mostly in color glass bottles with mouth diameter 18–31 mm and 0.5–5.0 l capacity. We detected only six small mammal species during four short-term live-trapping sessions performed in the same sites. Thus, we suggest that the survey of discarded bottles may be an efficient complement to traditional scientific methods (as live-trapping), which can be performed by both specialists and amateurs, who, at the same time, would clean the environment of the ecological traps.