On Saturday, May 2 Canadians are being called upon to pick up littered cigarette butts in a first-time, national drive to retrieve high volumes of the country’s most littered item. Coordinators coast-to-coast are signing up to receive and tally butts before sending them all to be recycled. Find out more and register as a coordinator or collector at www.agreenerfuture.ca.
Butt Blitz is a partnership involving A Greener Future, Envirocana Inc. and TerraCycle Canada – an inaugural Canada-wide effort to stub out what is unquestionably the most toxic form of small litter, the virtually indestructible plastic filter of a cigarette.
Sixty-five per cent of smokers are likely to litter cigarette butts rather than adopt a responsible smoking and disposal plan every time they smoke. Somehow, from lack of instruction and lack of communication, flicking butts came to be a routine method of disposal, part of a beginning smoker’s learning to smoke ritual, part of the “experience” he or she carries through their smoking lives.
Vancouver Aquarium Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup has offered up promotion for the event. Butt Blitz is tailor made for public participation, in fact, relies on it.
The collection day is a wonderful start to raising awareness and gaining community cooperation for strategies that stand not only to reduce butt litter, but reprogram the behavior of butt litterers, those people we know as smokers.
It’s time for the anti-cigarette butt people - and that 35 per cent group of non-littering smokers - to stand up and be counted. May 2 would be a good day to start.