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To gear up for our booth/table at the earth-friendly Flutterby Festival
on August 10th, we sent a team of volunteers to Elmwood Avenue recently to pick up those smelly, nasty predators known as cigarette butts.
Our goal: To raise awareness about where cigarette butts do (and don’t) end up when smokers are done smoking them.
Fact is: They are everywhere. In just three blocks of Elmwood Avenue we found them at street corners, sidewalks, lawns, near bus stops and in front of businesses.
Here are more facts.
FACT: Cigarette butts are the most frequently littered item on earth.
FACT: 1.69 billion pounds of cigarette butts end up as toxic trash every year.
That’s kind of a lot. Too big to even imagine.
FACT: Cigarette butts are NOT biodegradable.
When you throw your cigarette butt on the ground, it doesn’t biodegrade and disappear. It just sits there. And sits there. And leaches harmful toxins into the ground. And then sits there some more. It never goes away.
Not unless someone picks it up and disposes of it properly.
To solve the problem of cigarette butts (and protect our Earth and community) we’ve started “The Butts Stop Here” campaign. We’re not about shaming smokers, but raising awareness about the massive environmental problem of cigarette butts collecting on the ground as litter.
Feel free to join us. Grab some gloves (seriously, make sure you have gloves) and a plastic resealable bag, and spend 10 minutes in your neighborhood collecting littered butts. The environment will thank you. We thank you in advance.