Local members of the Surfrider Foundation have a simple message for smokers: Hold on to your butt.
The environmental group’s multi-city campaign urges smokers to dispose of their cigarette butts somewhere other than streets, parks and beaches, proclaiming: Beaches and Streets Are Not Ashtrays.
For now, there is a single disposal canister for spent cigarettes on Broad Street next to the Victoria Event Centre, but the plan is to add several more.
Six additional units have been ordered and places to install them will be identified, said Lucas Harris, vice-chairman of Surfrider’s South Island Chapter.
“We’re just chomping at the bit to start getting these things out there and spread the word in the community so that people see them in the street.”
Smoker Bernard Boerkamp walked past the Broad Street container Friday and said he welcomes it.
“I always look for places like this,” he said, cigarette in hand. “The streets are full of butts.”
Another fan is Darren Douglas, part of the Downtown Victoria Business Association Clean Team. Douglas’s regular routine has him picking up all sorts of trash from streets and sidewalks, and he said cigarette butts are always in good supply.
He said you can find butts almost anywhere, but they can be a real problem outside night spots.
“Years ago, they used to have ashtrays everywhere,” Douglas said as he made his rounds along Broad.
He said he is all for having disposal units geared to smokers, but questioned whether they would be used. “Like garbage cans, people throw their stuff right beside them.”
Surfrider plans to ship the collected butts to TerraCycle, a recycling outfit.
“One of the focuses of Surfrider is to get cigarette butts out of ocean, out of the garbage stream, off the ground,” said Mike Redpath, a member of the group.
“Cigarette material is recyclable.”
Plastic from cigarette filters can be used in building pallets, while the leftover paper and tobacco can be composted.
Redpath organized the effort to get the group’s first disposal unit in place just before Christmas. While there are a few similar units around the city, the Surfrider chapter hopes to create the first widespread program, Redpath said.
“Nobody likes cigarette butts on the ground,” he said.
Cigarette butts are also prominent source of garbage when Surfrider conducts its periodic cleanup efforts on local beaches, Lucas said.
A cigarette-butt recycling program launched in Vancouver in November established 110 collection points in that city’s downtown area.
