Parts of Moccasin Bend (background) and Point Park (foreground), units of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, could potentially benefit from the Great American Outdoors Act.  (Photo: Bob Butters)   A recent article in Outdoor Life by Alex Robinson and Natalie Krebs explains how "the Great American Outdoors Act proves that grassroots advocacy and our democracy still work—even if it’s not always pretty."  Read the article.   The Southern Environmental Law Center reports that If allowed to stand, White House changes to the National Environmental Policy Act will reduce public input that has guided major projects for decades, further diminishing the voices of communities that have long suffered environmental injustices and masking the full extent of polluting projects. On behalf of 17 environmental organizations, SELC filed a federal lawsuit to protect NEPA.  Read more.   The SELC also reports that In one of the Georgia General Assembly’s most interesting and remarkable legislative sessions in years, SELC and partners in the Georgia Water Coalition accomplished several important victories, many in the final days of the session. Read Improved environmental protections among Georgia legislative wins.   I concluded years ago that many people who wouldn't ordinarily litter don't see cigarette butts as litter. But they are, and they're ubiquitous in the environment. Fortunately, I recently ran across some good news. TerraCycle, the world’s leader in the collection and repurposing of complex waste streams, has joined forces with the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development and Keep Tennessee Beautiful to recycle the world’s most littered item – cigarette butts. After being shipped to TerraCycle, the waste received through the program is processed into plastic pellets for use in a variety of recycled products and Keep America Beautiful receives a $1 donation for every pound of cigarette waste collected. Read more.

Environmental educators Meredith Fish and Jenna Livernois can’t stand cigarette butts on their beaches. And they despise plastic litter tumbling along dunes, the tideline and public places of Dare County.   After storms, they’ve filled buckets full of plastic debris they’ve found on the beach – things that all too often end up in the sea where they can negatively impact or kill marine life. Year round, they teach visiting public-school students about the environment and how to protect it, and they are always on the lookout for new ways to reduce, reuse and recycle plastics.   This season, visitors to Jennette’s Pier will notice a new and improved recycling center on the south side deck of the pier house. Fish and Livernois put together the Recycle MORE Center over the winter for everyone to use. It was paid for with a grant from the North Carolina Aquarium Society.   Fish, who grew up on the Outer Banks, said the new center is accessible at any time.   “I want everyone to know they can come by and drop off their stuff,” Fish said. She and Livernois also encourage the hundreds of summer campers they teach each week to recycle more.   The new Recycle MORE Center expands the kinds of recyclables Jennette’s already collects, including cigarette butts and monofilament fishing line. Most standard curbside mixed recyclables are accepted in the blue can, Fish said. The bin with the black label collects plastic film, the red is for Solo cups, and yellow is for a variety of things such as fruit squeeze pouches, razor products and packaging, oral care products and small products such as lip balm.   Livernois said plastic film includes Ziploc bags, plastic grocery bags and plastic wrap. “Anything that passes the stretch test but isn’t crunchy sounding,” she said. Plastic wrapping, such as the kind around a case of water or Gatorade, can be taken to your local grocery store, Fish said. “They have so much from their pallets they send it back on their trucks,” Livernois said.   All of the pier’s recyclables are shipped to TerraCycle, the same facility that recycles the cigarette butts collected on the Jennette’s Pier property. The center also has a regular brown can for “regular old trash,” Fish said.

Denton has seen its fair share of upstart festivals.   But have any of them been inspired by trash?   Denton’s newest music festival — BUTTS Fest — wouldn’t exist without cigarette litter around the downtown Denton or the volunteers who’ve come together to clean them up. This weekend, it will be a 45-act festival making the most of the sunshine (and the musicians who intended to play the now-canceled South by Southwest) at Harvest House, Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios and Armadillo Ale Works.   Denton musician Michael Tong Kokkinakis is the guy holding the smoking butt, so to speak.   “BUTTS stands for Better Understanding Through Trash Service,” Kokkinakis said. “It got started last Earth Day. We were already involved in trash pickup, so I thought, ‘Why not create something that spreads the word about it?’”      

BUTTS FEST

Where: Harvest House, 331 E. Hickory St.; Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, 411 E. Sycamore St.; and Armadillo Ale Works, 221 S. Bell Ave.   Details: For most events, a suggested $5 donation is encouraged. On Sunday at Rubber Gloves, admission is $10, or $5 before 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.buttsfest.com or www.facebook.com/buttsdtx.   SATURDAY Harvest House 11 a.m. — Karma Yoga Noon to 5 p.m. — Art & Artisan Market 1 p.m. — Lollard (DJ) 2 p.m. — Phokis.wav (DJ) 4 p.m. — Phlowerie 5 p.m. — Andoren 6 p.m. — Mother Tongues 7 p.m. — Breathing Rainbow 8 p.m. — Maestro Maya 9 p.m. — Aztec Milk Temple 10 p.m. — Jeb Bush Orchestra 10:45 p.m. — Self-Help 11:30 p.m. — Moon Kissed Rubber Gloves indoor stage 6 p.m. — Glow Yoga 8 to 10 p.m. — Burlesque 10 p.m. — Miss Mino 11:15 p.m. — eve.ning 12:30 p.m. — YSA Rubber Gloves outdoor stage 6 p.m. to midnight — Where? House Art Collective 6 to 8 p.m. — Breeze-o-matic 8 p.m. — Sanford Black 10 p.m. — Sum Bloke Rubber Gloves Library Stage 9 p.m. — Karaoke, hosted by Nancy & Silky Jo SUNDAY Armadillo Ale Works Noon — Community unity brunch Noon — Michael Kokkinakis 12:30 p.m. — Scott Levings 1 p.m. — Nancy Alatorre 1:30 p.m. — Open mic, hosted by Rache Ann 3 p.m. — City Limits 4 p.m. — Dirty Dan & the Basketball Boys 5 p.m. — Sea of Oaks 6 p.m. — Maya Rubber Gloves indoor stage 2:30 p.m. — Anthony Cappeto 3:30 p.m. — Patti 4:30 p.m. — Irrevery 5 p.m. — Carlo Pezzamenti & Kokkinakis 5 6:30 p.m. — Gold Dime 7:30 p.m. — Felt & Fur 8:30 p.m. — Blank Hellscape 9:30 p.m. — Psychic Killers 11 p.m. — Mattie 11:30 p.m. — Rat Bastard Midnight — Heavy Baby Sea Slugs 1 p.m. — Monte Espina Rubber Gloves outdoor stage 3 p.m. — Sexual Jeremy 4 p.m. — Starfruit 6 p.m. — Thin Skin 7 p.m. — Hot Mom 8 p.m. — Flesh Narc 9 p.m. — Janet Xmas & Blyre Cpanx 10 p.m. — Leya 10 Rubber Gloves Library Stage 2 p.m. — Froggy 2000 5 p.m. — MILL 10:30 p.m. — Locations 12:30 a.m. — Chelsey Danielle   Kokkinakis said he and other volunteers meet on the Square at 6:30 p.m. each Monday and pick up cigarette litter until about 9 p.m.   “People might not notice it, but there are so many cigarette butts all around the downtown area, even though there are a lot of spots to dispose of them,” he said.   Nonsmokers might pass them by without a glance, but there are cigarette trash receptacles downtown. They’re mounted on poles — small boxes that declare “The butt stops here.”   Autumn Natalie, the program manager of Keep Denton Beautiful, said the nonprofit installed 20 of the receptacles in downtown Denton and in Quakertown Park. The pole-mounted receptacles — a trademarked design called the Sidewalk Buttler — are placed around the Square, side streets just off the Square and near Fry Street on Hickory Street by the University of North Texas campus. In-ground cigarette receptacles are placed throughout Quakertown Park, and all of them are designed to be moved quickly if officials find that smokers aren’t using them at that location. Each can hold up to 700 cigarette butts. The receptacles are metal, and able to contain the paper if a cigarette is still burning.       Natalie said flicking cigarette butts to the ground, or walking off after stepping on them to extinguish them, is littering, which can carry a fine up to $500.   “It’s the No. 1 littered item in the state, the city and the country,” Natalie said. “Aside from the work Michael and his group have done, our staff and volunteers have collected just shy of 40,000 cigarette butts since Oct. 1.”   Keep Denton Beautiful doesn’t discard the collected butts. It packages them and ships them to TerraCycle, which recycles the butts, breaking them down into cellulose acetate pellets that can be used to make park benches and play sets for children, Natalie said.   Kokkinakis is a smoker himself (“I should probably work on quitting,” he says), and said he used to be among the smokers who flick butts to the ground when an ashtray isn’t available. Then, he said, personal research on the matter converted him.   “Smokers think cigarettes are biodegradable. That it’s just paper. I thought so, too,” he said. “But the filters are full of chemicals. ... So when it rains, all that stuff washes out, leaches into the ground.”   And there’s a lot more cigarette litter than people think, he said.   “Thirty-eight percent of the trash worldwide is cigarette litter,” he said. “It’s really surprising.”         As he and other volunteers continued cleaning up butts, Kokkinakis said, they recruited local downtown businesses to allow the volunteers to place buckets smokers can use as ashtrays outside their businesses. The volunteers empty the buckets on their circuit.   “It’s a trash pickup that turned into a pub crawl,” Kokkinakis said. “We’ve created a community that cares about the city.”   Kokkinakis is a classical guitarist — he seemed to have a knack for the instrument, then got more serious about the art after taking a class at Richland College and Brookhaven College. He studied with renowned classical guitarist Carlo Pezzimenti, a Texas Woman’s University faculty member, and he and Pezzimenti have a duo act.   Kokkinakis said as he watched community build over the simple act of picking up cigarette butts, he also started to miss 35 Denton, a popular music festival that last took place in 2016.   “Since all these venues were on for a festival, we decided to book bands for a festival,” he said. “There will be touring groups, but we were also focused on showcasing local bands. Whatever we do here, we want to celebrate Denton. I’ve been here eight years — I want to show my gratitude.”   BUTTS Fest isn’t a genre festival. Kokkinakis said music lovers will catch chillwave, lo-fi, classical guitar music, DJ sets, blues, folk and country music. The festival includes a Sunday brunch for the homeless — including an open mic — at Armadillo Ale Works.   “The main focus here was culture,” he said. “Denton has a nice culture to it.”   Kokkinakis said he means for the festival to be an annual event.   “The level of interaction has people really collaborating,” he said. “I can say I want to change the world. I just want people to stop littering. I’d like for people think more about their waste.”  

Community groups, workplaces, schools, and youth groups can organize a Shoreline Cleanup in their community to record and remove litter from a coastline. While volunteers don’t always get to record items as strange as a polar bear skin, the recorded litter has led the Shoreline Cleanup to compose a yearly Dirty Dozen list of the top twelve most common shoreline litter items. The results from 2019 show that single-use plastic items make up the greatest number of litter items that plague Canada’s shorelines.   The greatest category of litter by volume and weight found on Canada’s shorelines comes from fishing debris and illegally dumped items. Think longlines, buoys, cars, and industrial litter. But the majority of items collected during a cleanup can be classified as recreational items, says Julia Wakeling, outreach coordinator at the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, speaking during a January 2020 webinar.   9 easy ways to get a beautiful shoreline and a healthy lake   Recreational items include objects that may be forgotten on a beach trip, or might blow away by accident onto a shoreline. Cigarette butts, lighters, food wrappers, children’s toys, and fishing rods are all examples of recreational litter.   Taking the top spot on the Dirty Dozen are cigarette butts. Cigarette butts are challenging to deal with as they contain plastic, and can’t be handled by your standard city recycling centre. Wakeling says that cigarette butts collected at a Shoreline Cleanup are sent out for specialized recycling by an organization called TerraCycle.   What type of dock is right for your shoreline?   Next on the list are pieces of tiny plastic or foam litter. These items are a cause for alarm because Wakeling says that these small pieces of plastic are on their way to becoming microplastics. They “deteriorate into smaller pieces the longer they spend in water,” she says.   As we move down the list we run into more single-use items. Food wrappers, paper, bottle caps, plastic bags, beverage cans, and plastic bottles fill out the number three to eight spots on the Dirty Dozen. Straws come in at number nine, foam and other packaging take tenth and eleventh place, and finally, coffee cups close out the list as the twelfth most common items collected during cleanups.   Recording the litter collected along a shoreline allows the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup to provide information that can be used for policy changes to protect Canada’s waterways. In June 2019, Justin Trudeau announced Canada’s commitment to ban single-use plastic as of 2021. The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup’s litter data was cited by the federal government’s press release about the ban.   The initiative also aims to make a difference by inspiring individuals to make personal changes in their consumption habitats. By participating in a Shoreline Cleanup and seeing the impact that these items have on shoreline environments, volunteers may rethink the type of items they spend their dollars on.   These individual actions and behaviour changes are what Wakeling says are the “most important” to the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup. “We’re really proud when individuals leave our cleanups with a change in their behaviours.”

From the City of Fredericksburg:   Several new downtown Sidewalk Buttlers are standing ready to help prevent cigarette butt litter. The City of Fredericksburg’s Clean and Green Commission and the Rappahannock Regional Solid Waste Management Board (R-Board) partnered to acquire the 30 free cigarette buttlers from Keep Virginia Beautiful (KVB) to provide the public a means to dispose of their cigarette butts. These new buttlers are in addition to the initial 30 units donated in 2019 by KVB to the City’s Parks, Recreation and Events Department — now in place in City parks.   The City’s Public Works Department installed the buttlers and they are emptied by Commission interns. The containers are mounted on sidewalk trash receptacles and are primarily located along Caroline and William Streets. All cigarette butts collected will be weighed and then recycled via TerraCycle.   These new units replace the downtown “butt buckets” the Commission sourced and maintained as part of their ongoing “Butts Are Litter Too” campaign. “The downtown butt buckets served their purpose to help reduce cigarette litter, but they were labor intensive and needed to be replaced regularly,” said Robert Courtnage, Commission chairman. “Our new Sidewalk Buttlers are a more attractive and more permanent solution to help curb cigarette litter.”   Cigarette butts are the most frequently littered item. Because the filters are made mostly of plastic, they do not biodegrade. When dropped on the street or sidewalk, they may be washed into storm drains and end up in the Rappahannock River and beyond, where they harm aquatic life.   Littering is also a criminal offense in the City. The Fredericksburg Police Department strictly enforces the littering code. According to the City’s Watershed Manager, “A cigarette butt that is tossed on the sidewalk could cost you up to $2,500, a conviction of a Class 1 misdemeanor, lost wages, and court costs. That’s a pretty expensive cigarette.”   Watch the R-Board’s video, “Please Butt In – Cigarette Butts are Litter too” https://youtu.be/1HGZ0veKT5k   For more information about the Fredericksburg Clean & Green Commission, please visit their Facebook page or webpage.

Thirty new downtown “Sidewalk Buttlers” are standing ready to help prevent cigarette butt litter in downtown Fredericksburg.   Fredericksburg’s Clean and Green Commission and the Rappahannock Regional Solid Waste Management Board have partnered to acquire the free cigarette buttlers from Keep Virginia Beautiful to provide the public an easy way to dispose of their cigarette butts.   Cigarette butts are the most frequently littered item, and their filters don’t biodegrade because they’re made mostly of plastic. If dropped on the street or sidewalk, they can be washed into storm drains and end up in the Rappahannock River and beyond where they can harm aquatic life.   Fredericksburg’s Parks, Recreation and Events Department received 30 buttlers last year from KVB, which were placed in the city’s parks. The city’s Public Works Department staff has installed this next round on sidewalk trash receptacles primarily along Caroline and William Streets. They replace the old “butt buckets” the Commission sourced and maintained as part of their ongoing “Butts Are Litter Too” campaign.   “The downtown butt buckets served their purpose to help reduce cigarette litter, but they were labor intensive and needed to be replaced regularly,” said Robert Courtnage, Commission chairman. “Our new Sidewalk Buttlers are a more attractive and more permanent solution to help curb cigarette litter.”   Clean and Green Commission interns will empty the buttlers, and the butts will be weighed and recycled via TerraCycle.   Littering is also a criminal offense in the city, and is strictly enforced by the Fredericksburg Police Department.   “A cigarette butt that is tossed on the sidewalk could cost you up to $2,500, a conviction of a Class 1 misdemeanor, lost wages, and court costs,” said Joe Young, Fredericksburg’s watershed manager. “That’s a pretty expensive cigarette.”

BERLIN, Md.- The Town of Berlin says it has purchased a new solution to cigarette butts piling up in the downtown area.   The town has purchased a new solution called "Cigarette Buttlers." They are essentially 15 small black boxes that resemble bird boxes attached to poles.   The town has bought about 15 new canisters and seven have been installed already in the downtown area.   Ivy Wells, with the town's Economic and Community Development, says the purchases were all apart of a grant the town applied for and received.   "Berlin is a sustainable community so what I did last year was I wrote and received a $10,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Community Development," Well said.   Only $2,000 were used for these Cigarette Buttlers though; the remaining portion went toward new trash cans and recycle receptacles.   Through a company called TerraCycle, the butts will be recycled and turned into things people can purchase like benches.   The town will collect these materials and send them directly to the company.

BERLIN, Md.- The Town of Berlin says it has purchased a new solution to cigarette butts piling up in the downtown area.   The town has purchased a new solution called "Cigarette Buttlers." They are essentially 15 small black boxes that resemble bird boxes attached to poles.   The town has bought about 15 new canisters and seven have been installed already in the downtown area.   Ivy Wells, with the town's Economic and Community Development, says the purchases were all apart of a grant the town applied for and received.   "Berlin is a sustainable community so what I did last year was I wrote and received a $10,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Community Development," Well said.   Only $2,000 were used for these Cigarette Buttlers though; the remaining portion went toward new trash cans and recycle receptacles.   Through a company called TerraCycle, the butts will be recycled and turned into things people can purchase like benches.   The town will collect these materials and send them directly to the company.  

(Sept. 20, 2019) The following took place during the Coastal Resources Legislative Committee (Green Team) meeting, Sept. 11.   Mitigation fees   Blazer also presented a Power Point that she will bring to the City Council to request a transfer of $30,000 from various deferred revenue accounts to the city’s stormwater program.   Sustainable Maryland   City Environmental Engineer Gail Blazer said a Sustainable Maryland application was submitted in June. To be certified, the committee only needs 150 points, but it has applied for 380 points.   Awards will be given out during the Maryland Municipal League’s Fall Conference, which begins Oct. 13 and ends Oct. 15.   Butt huts and recycling   Although Public Works Director Hal Adkins was not present, he sent an email to the members describing the cigarette butt container, located on the west side.   In his email, he said the containers located on the west side were a hit and were consistently full.   Adkins said he would need to replace those containers with larger ones to accommodate the high-volume usage.   In addition, he said delays in dumping the containers were caused by a manpower shortage. Following the end of the season, the maintenance department lost around 12 employees.   There was a problem with private efforts to install the containers, Sandi Smith of Maryland Coastal Bays Program said.   Smith said she had distributed 50 of the containers to businesses, but the businesses have been slow to put them out.   She plans on following up with the businesses to pinpoint the issue.   The program sends the cigarette butts to TerraCycle and the company uses the butts to make benches.   TerraCycle had benches ready for Ocean City, but Smith wanted the company to add a large message on the bench and brand it.   In total, the program has recycled 150 pounds of cigarette butts, and currently has another 55-gallon barrel ready to be sent.

The first time Chloé Dubois saw a remote beach littered with plastics, she was struck by the grim reality of how big the problem had become. It was 2012 and Dubois was participating in a shoreline cleanup along the coast of Alaska. Within five days, the dedicated group had picked up 18,000 kilograms (40,000 pounds) of plastic pollution. Dubois has also been active cleaning up British Columbia’s coastlines. “It completely transformed my plastic usage and I knew I had to do something about it,” said Dubois, who is co-founder and executive director of the Ocean Legacy Foundation. “I think there’s a misconception that because we live in Canada, our coastlines are pristine. But depending on where you are, it can be incredibly polluted. It’s important to acknowledge the problem we have at home.” The Ocean Legacy Foundation has been cleaning up Canada’s coastlines since 2014, collecting more than 70,000 kilograms (157,000 pounds) of marine debris during its first year. But Dubois admits it’s a never-ending task. The foundation, along with dozens of other groups throughout southern B.C., continues to gather a colossal amount of debris, ranging from polystyrene, fishing gear, rope and beverage containers to tampon applicators, pens and shotgun shells. And it has found creative ways to repurpose the mountain of debris accumulating inside its Delta warehouse. Hard plastics from fishing floats are given back to Harbour Chandler Ltd. for fishers to reuse and repurpose. Fishing ropes are given out for art projects, such as carpet building, potted plants and bracelet making. Water bottle materials are being tested for shoe production and tires are being recycled into new rubber products. The foundation has also partnered with Lush Cosmetics North America, which uses the hard-mixed plastics collected from beaches to package some of its products. Other companies have also reached out to the foundation for sustainably sourced packaging. “We are working on what we want these plastics to be used for, so it doesn’t create more single-use plastic products we are going to have to clean off the beach,” said Dubois, noting the foundation will soon be able to process and transform rope and netting materials into pellets for re-manufacturing. “We need to be coming at the problem from different angles. There’s a lot of different interests, perspectives and solutions, and they all need to be part of the puzzle to move forward.” The Surfrider Foundation Pacific Rim Chapter has also found creative ways to turn coastal waste into consumer goods. Now in its second year, the Hold On To Your Butt campaign has recycled 500,000 cigarette butts from canisters placed along streets and beaches throughout Tofino and Ucluelet. The butts are sent to TerraCycle, which turns them into plastic lumber. According to Lilly Woodbury, a Surfrider Foundation Canada representative, cigarette butt filters can take up to 25 years to decompose and are the most commonly littered item in the world. In September 2019, more than 4,000 cigarette butts were collected during a cleanup in Tofino. “Recycling this material keeps it out of waters, public spaces and landfills,” said Woodbury, noting Surfrider also runs the Wetsuit Reincarnation Program, which recycles old wetsuits into yoga mats. “Mainstream wetsuits are made of neoprene, a petroleum-based material, which will never biodegrade.” The Province is exploring ways to address marine debris, marine-sourced plastics and abandoned vessels. Sheila Malcolmson, MLA for Nanaimo and Parliamentary Secretary for Environment, visited coastal communities during the summer to learn about solutions and make recommendations for provincial action. Learn More: For more information about abandoned vessels, marine debris and marine-sourced plastics in B.C. and to keep up to date on the parliamentary secretary for environment’s work, visit: gov.bc.ca/MarineDebrisProtection For more information about the Ocean Legacy Foundation, visit: https://oceanlegacy.ca/ For more information about the Surfrider Foundation, visit: https://www.surfrider.org/chapters/entry/pacific-rim