The Heart of Our City Committee (HOCC) is helping fund a project dreamt up by two 15-year-old Lethbridge residents in an effort to reduce litter in the downtown core. Steven Yang and Morteza Faraji said they are elated to find out their application was successful.

“It’s totally surreal,” Faraji said.

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The idea for the project was born out of concern. Yang said they learned from the Helen Schuler Nature Centre that cigarette butt litter is a major problem in Lethbridge. “We’ve always cared about the environment, and to hear that the city wasn’t really doing anything to help it, we decided to do it ourselves,” he explained. The pair began working on the idea in February, and were able to manufacture seven smoker poles and cigarette drums for the waste. “Our initiative consists of large smoker barrels, (smoker) receptacles that you just place your cigarette butts in and they’ll be placed around large public areas around the city,” Faraji explained.

“We also have smaller smoker poles that are much smaller that will be placed near businesses… like patios.”

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Cigarettes collected from these bins will be sent to TerraCycle, a private recycling business, where one dollar for every pound will be donated to the Interfaith Food Bank. “Our long-term goal is to get more out there,” Yang continued, adding they plan to install the devices in the next month. Yang and Faraji’s initiative is one of 11 chosen to receive financial support from the new Re-Imagine Downtown Activation Grant. They are being awarded $3,000 out of a total $99,225. “Despite the short turn-around for applications, we saw a great deal of interest in Intake 1,” says Andrew Malcom, Urban Revitalization Manager for the City of Lethbridge. “We received 19 applications, with funding requests totaling in excess of $300,000 – thus there were not adequate funds to meet the demand. “This is a great sign of things to come for downtown Lethbridge.” Out of the 11 approvals, nine are returning initiatives that have been previously funded. Those include Shakespeare in the Park, Downtown Lethbridge Farmers’ Market, Lethbridge Electronic Music Fest, and Theatre Outré. A full list of initiatives can be found here. Lorien Johansen, chairperson for the HOCC,  said it was great to see some new ideas come to the table. “The things that we know and love and want to go to every year — music on the square, electronic music fest — we love to see those come back,” said Johansen.

“But there’s always room for new, different and unique ideas.”   Along with the cigarette butt initiative, the other new project is a panel-style competition called Building Business Downtown, which is a recruitment project to fill empty storefronts. Entrepreneurs looking to move into a downtown space will pitch their business plans to judges, who will choose a winner to receive lease support and other guidance. “We just thought it would be a super fun way to fill vacant space and make downtown vibrant again,” said Emily Chong with the Downtown Lethbridge Business Revitalization Zone. “We hope that this will encourage entrepreneurs who are ready to move into a space to kind of take that leap.”

As dry weather persists on Vancouver Island, it’s important to remember the risks of mindlessly tossing your cigarette butt.  With this in mind, Campbell River’s Downtown BIA wants locals to dispose of their butt’s responsibility, launching a unique initiative to help them do just that. They’ve placed ‘cigarette waste receptacles’ around the downtown core. There are currently ten containers scattered through the area, with plans to add three more. According to BIA executive director Jan Wade, not properly disposing of cigarette butts leads to increased pollution in our oceans and wastewater. It’s what first prompted the BIA to take action. Plus, with it being dry outside, tossing your butt on the ground also creates a fire hazard: “Things are so dry right now,” notes Wade, “that it’s critical that people don’t throw their butts.” She says the receptacles first started going up back in May. However, her team has been collecting cigarette butts since February.

“I heard about a cigarette waste recycling program in Kamloops and Victoria. So I contacted them, and we are now recycling cigarette butts through TerraCycle, which is a company back East.”

Wade says she gathers all the butts up and then ships them to TerraCycle. “They pay for the shipping,” she explains, “and then the butts, if you can believe it, are recycled from there. The tobacco and the paper are composted, and the filter – which has all the microplastics, which is so harmful to our oceans and water waste – is treated through a program that makes everything into little plastic pellets.” According to Wade, the pellets are then made into plastic furniture, plastic lumber, and oddly enough, ashtrays. “So, to date, we have sent off 110 pounds to TerraCycle. And I just picked up another 30 pounds today,” she says. Wade says it took some time to get the receptacles up and operational. That’s because the BIA had to get donations before arranging for someone to install them. The local Daybreak Rotary and North Island-Powell River MP Rachel Blaney donated $500 each to help purchase the receptacles. Wade says Blaney is also handing out pocket-sized reusable ashtrays. “They’re two inches square and they’ve got a little flap on them with a snap,” she says. “So when you finish smoking, you can get your butts and put them in there, and then you can always empty them into our receptacles. We hand out lots of those.” And the receptacles themselves are pretty easy to work, notes Wade. The butts are disposed through the top, and there’s a key for the bottom. You then unlock it, emptying the butts from there. The BIA’s next task, adds Wade, is to install signs above each receptacle saying ‘Butt Out Here’: “Somebody said that the recyclables are on the small side and not that noticeable, so we decided that we would draw more attention to them.”

Uxbridge, Ont., resident Eilish Neilly has had a love for planet Earth from a young age, and she is now heading a cigarette butt cleanup team in her hometown. This winter, Neilly found herself out of work, and when a volunteer opportunity came up with A Greener Future, an organization that works with local communities to promote environmental preservation, she jumped at the chance to join the team. “I love doing work with non-profit and charities,” says Neilly, “and I was excited to get the role as a communications assistant with A Greener Future.” Neilly studied environmental management at the University of Guelph and has always found volunteering for the environment to be a rewarding activity. When the Butt Blitz project came up, Neilly signed on as a co-ordinator and based her team out of her hometown of Uxbridge. A Greener Future started the Butt Blitz in 2015, and in its six years running, volunteers have picked up more than one million cigarette butts. The collected butts are all sent to an organization called TerraCycle, where they can be properly recycled and used to create industrial items such as park benches and plastic pallets. This year, the organization is taking on its biggest goal yet – to pick up one million butts in the month of April alone. Currently, it has reached a little over a third of its goal, and it’s looking for a strong finish to the month-long cleanup project. Neilly has a team of about 11 volunteers, and so far they have already collected around 30,000 cigarette buts in Uxbridge alone. “Once you start looking for them, you really can’t ever un-see it,” says Neilly. “Although it sometimes feels like your impact is really small, I know that if a lot of people get on it we can make a difference.” The project is usually run as a single-day blitz along the shore of Lake Ontario, but as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the project was modified this year to a month-long, community-based project. With the success of this project, Neilly suspects it might continue in a similar fashion next year. “There’s often a lot of shame that goes along with litter, but with cigarette butts it just seems to be perceived as more normal,” says Neilly. “I think that’s because people don’t really know what’s in the butts. There is actually plastic inside the filter, people often think it’s cotton or a natural fibre. With that plastic comes a lot of other issues over time when it’s left in our environment.”