MONTREAL | Several residents of Verdun joined forces on Saturday to collect old abandoned butts on the sidewalks of their neighborhood. As an incentive: the volunteers received a beer from the Benelux neighborhood bar.   In all, the citizen group Tomorrow Verdun was able to gather 51 participants, children as adults, who crisscrossed the neighborhood in search of butts. As an incentive, volunteers were treated to a beer from the Benelux microbrewery in exchange for their hard work.   The group attacked the neighborhood's metro stations, LaSalle, De l'Église and Verdun, as well as the Arthur-Therrien pool. These were four strategic locations, according to one of the two instigators of the event, Céline-Audrey Beauregard.   Large cigarette butts have been sent to a recycling center, TerraCycle, where they will be treated. The citizen group would like to repeat the "megofest", the name given to the event, five or six times in the next year, said Ms. Beauregard. She calls these events "unifying" and important to create "a sense of belonging to the neighborhood".   The volunteer said she was inspired by an already popular movement in Europe to collect butts. Indeed, in some bars of the old continent, customers can receive, in exchange for a drink, a bottle or a bag filled with butts, a free consumption.   "It was, in my opinion, a good initiative that could very well be implemented here. In this way, we could also raise awareness about the damage of throwing cigarette butts into the wild, "she explained. Other gestures For the next edition, the organizer would like to sell ashtrays to passersby smokers, at low cost, in team with Mégot Zero (a program that aims to implement ashtrays in private and public areas), in order not only to raise awareness, but also to offer them another option than leaving cigarettes in the wild.   The Verdun Demain group planned to attend the borough council meeting on Tuesday evening to present the council with several initiatives, including the addition of ashtrays in non-smoking areas and awareness-raising elements on the doors of the stations. subway.