Two studies whose geographic origins couldn’t be further apart have converged in the past week to validate the work we, and others, are doing to change behaviours through environmental education (EE).

In Britain, a survey for the country’s environmental youth trust, funded by Barclay LivingLand, showed that although nine out of ten parents tell their kids not to litter almost five in ten children have witnessed their moms or dads littering.  Fewer than half the parents explained to children that littering harms the environment.  Practice what you preach certainly applies here.  The UK Daily Mail trumpets the headline: "Parents accused over litter".

Coincidentally, meanwhile, in the middle of the Indian Ocean on Mahé Island in the Republic of Seychelles, researchers from Imperial College London discovered another telling find. 

Their study of EE and how it influences behaviour at home gives quantitative evidence to suggest that children, who receive EE, do influence their parents’ environmental attitudes and behaviours, even when they’re not trying to.

IOP Publishing released the findings Feb. 13 Environmental Research Letters in a paper by Peter Damerell, who headed the Department of Life Sciences team. Among their observations are that EE begun early will likely last forever, and unenlightened behaviours are not impossible to turn around either.  
The entire abstract is available HERE.

Taken together these studies help cement what we keep stressing about litter awareness. They explain why our program’s blend of music, kids, litter education and model behaviours becomes a lasting partnership that is transferrable across generations. 

I take this new evidence to heart.  It validates what we’re doing at the Litter Prevention Program.  It proves there is science behind what we are doing and that young people truly are the levers of behavioral change who can turn us to a time when nobody litters, wouldn’t even think of it.

I know a lot of us hate seeing cigarette butts on the ground, but feel powerless to change the smokers who litter them.   My friend mused how great it would be to show how many butts of hazardous waste one littering smoker creates. 

I hit the research books.  I learned that not all smokers litter their butts.  Not every cigarette a smoker consumes will become litter.  The studies say about 35 per cent of all smokers litter.  On average they will litter 5 butts out of every 20-pack.  One report estimated that 45 per cent of smokers carry and use a personal ashtray.

Crunching numbers is one thing.  Bringing them to life is quite another.  In Ontario, home to 2.1 million smokers, we followed the “.35-formula” to estimate the number of littering smokers in this province, where close to 40 per cent of Canada’s smokers reside.  The total exceeds 750,000 people.

Using the modest estimate of one in four cigarettes being tossed, every smoker who litters generates 1,825 of these vile little items of long-lasting litter every year.  Cellulose acetate (plastic and tobacco) laced in chemicals lies ready to leach into a drain or water way near you, is able to set a forest on fire with a single careless cinder.

If the picture of 1,825 stinking butts I put in a see-through plastic handbag is gross, the sight of 30 years’ worth is downright disgusting.

To raise awareness that cigarette butt tossing is littering and falls under the heading of ‘crime’ we thought it was time to show smokers that it isn’t just one end they’re flicking, it’s thousands of butts a year.  I can assure you this doesn’t do the planet any good.

In all, we trucked 54,750 cigarette butts to Ontario’s legislative building in downtown Toronto.  We filled a wheelbarrow with them and brought it to the attention of the television media.  This was days before Weedless Wednesday, when smokers are asked to try to quit smoking for the day. 

I ask smokers to think about quitting littering if they can’t quit smoking.  We showcased the smelly mountain of tobacco filters weighing 20 kilos as the environmental deficit created by one flicking smoker in 30 years.  Now multiply that by three quarters of a million people and you know the problem of cigarette butt littering is not small.  In fact, we were able to show how large an issue this really is.

Thank you, all the considerate smokers out there.  Now can’t you do something about the other guys?