During the early Saturday morning hours of  Oct. 22, volunteers lined up in front of Ocean Beach yet again. They were here just two weekends ago, But they knew they could fill their buckets mainly with one thing: cigarette butts. They were ready to spend the next two hours of their weekend ensuring the beach was clean for the public. The volunteers had three waste containers: one for trash, one for plastic and one just for cigarette butts. Cigarette butts are not only the highest form of trash collected from national parks and beaches but also the most littered item in the world. Every year, 4.5 trillion butts are disposed of and 3 billion butts are littered. In response to this, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law that will ban the use of cigarettes, nicotine and marijuana vapes at state parks and beaches. Starting Jan. 1, the state’s Department of Parks and Recreation will be required to put up no-smoking signs at beaches and parks. There will be a fine up to $25 for a person caught smoking, and it will be considered an infraction. Cigarette butts contain heavy metals, including poisonous  lead, that leach into water and soil, threatening water quality, marine life, and seafood safety. A study from San Diego State University conducted in 2010 suggests one cigarette butt in a single liter of water is sufficient to kill both marine and freshwater fish. Although how this translates from the laboratory to an actual aquatic setting isn’t yet clear, but researchers speculate these numbers have gotten worse. Dr. Thomas Novotny, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics Professor at San Diego State University, and one of the researchers who conducted this study. “We don’t think the [cigarette Butt] does any good for people. It’s not really a filter, it’s just a marketing tool,” said Dr. Novotny, one of the researchers who conducted the study and a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics. “Cigarette filters are a form of pesticide that devastates marine life. People Have to stop smoking.” Although the state beaches ban will further discourage smokers from contaminating beaches and parks, he worries the law has very vague wording. “Bonafide religious groups can have an exception for smoking on beaches, which just opens the door to a lot of deception and irregularity,” he said. Native Americans smoke for religious ceremonial rituals and are not specified in the law. The efforts to stop cigarette use on beaches in California goes back to 2005, “Hold On To Your Butts” is an example of a campaign that has been fighting for years to end cigarette smoking on beaches nationwide. It is run by SurfRider, an organization who partners with local businesses. Along with installing trash cans specific for cigarette butts called “Buttcans” throughout San Francisco, they educate smokers. One of the biggest lessons they impart is that cigarette butts are not filters for the nicotine, despite what companies have historically claimed. SurfRider is the umbrella organization that runs volunteer beach cleanups. Cigarette butts collected in the beach cleanups are sent to a company TerraCycle and recycled. TerraCycle recycles cigarette butts through its Cigarette Waste Brigade program, which launched in Canada in 2012. The program has since expanded into the US, Australia and Japan. They introduced a free recycling program in the US, where a person can earn “TerraCycle points” which are redeemable for charitable gifts, like donations for local schools or non-profit of the person’s choice. Lisa Pelligrino is Terracycle’s Strategic Partnerships’ Manager. TerraCycle’s headquarters in NYC is completely decorated with recycled items as Pelligrino explained her desk is a recycled old door, her walls are recycled art-covered from the ceilings to the floors. “The cigarette filter is made from cellulose acetate, like plastic. It’s a misconception that they’re cotton or biodegradable.”  Pelligrino said, adding that this is a social habit. “ People think it’s socially cool to flick a cigarette butt, even worse, they think they’re heroes for not throwing them in the trash and causing a fire.” Melanie Napelz, a beach cleanup coordinator, said that she doesn’t think the penalty of $25 will be effective. “California coastline is National Park Service including Ocean Beach, most of San Francisco, even the aquatic Park area down by Crisfield. That’s all covered by the National Park Service. I do think it’s a great step. I don’t know how they’re going to enforce it. Especially at a beach of this size,” said Napelz. Naplez’s opinion was shared by regular visitors to the beach who believed that “butt cans” could be a solution to this problem. People should change their fundamental behavior of disposing of cigarette butts, since, “ a lot of people were taught to be able to throw it [cigarette butts] on the ground,” added Napelz. Some of Ocean Beach visitors are dog walkers and regulars who enjoy the Ocean breeze of the Beach, playing fetch with their dogs, and Frisbee matches on the weekends. “The amount of butts that I was throwing out was a lot, even subconsciously I was throwing them out, after quitting I realized it was 44 butts a week.” said Richard Matt, a beachgoer, while holding his dog’s leash and pointing at the beach. Matt went on to explain that this law will help smokers like himself  limit smoking on beaches all together, as people don’t have the knowledge to differentiate between State and National beaches and parks. He added, “I believe it’s a step in the right direction.”

Local businesses launch initiative to educate Pearl District business owners, residents, and visitors on cigarette bin locations, use, and disposal.     On a brisk November morning, David Mitchell and John Wertzler are doing their part to stop the spread of one of the greatest environmental threats in Portland — cigarette butts.   No, seriously.   Cigarette butts are nonbiodegradable and loaded with toxic chemicals generated during smoking. They include nicotine and heavy metals. Up to an estimated 6 trillion cigarettes are smoked around the world every year and two-thirds of them are discarded into the environment, where they threaten people and wildlife.   "Cigarette butts don't break down easily and are toxic for years," said Mitchell, standing next to The Armory Theater at Northwest Davis Street and 11th Avenue.   So together with Wertzler, Mitchell attached a small metal box to a Portland Bureau of Transportation sign post. It was a receptacle for butts from TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based company that recycles them into safe consumer products, such as plastic pallets and flower pots. The ash and tobacco are separated out and composted in a specialized process.     Mitchell and Wertzler are volunteer members of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, which has launched an initiative to install 105 of the boxes throughout the district. Association volunteers will empty them out and ship the contents to the company, ensuring the discarded butts will never harm the environment.   The visible sides of the 18-by-4-by-4-inch box are covered with bright red decals announcing its purpose. After the installation, Wertzler christened it with a few butts picked up from the sidewalk.   Mitchell, the program leader and former chairman of the neighborhood association's Livability and Safety Committee, first began pursuing the project three years ago. A nonsmoker, he was increasingly appalled by the butts he saw piling up on streets and sidewalks throughout the district where he lives and wanted to do something about it.   Researching the issue, he discovered that other cities already were working with TerraCycle. Pittsburgh has installed 200 of the receptacles and is shipping 150 pounds of butts to the company every week, said Mitchell, a retired health care consultant.     Launching the program involved more work, including contacting several city bureaus to figure out with whom to partner. The neighborhood association raised $5,500 to buy the first 60 boxes and mounting hardware. Contributors include neighborhood association donors, the R2C Group, Judie Dunken Real Estate, and the Northwest Neighborhoods Parks and Recreation Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation.   The installations started a few weeks ago and will be completed soon. If all goes well, fundraising will begin for the remaining 45 boxes. Donors will have the opportunity to have their names on box decals.   The 60 tamperproof and fire-resistant boxes are being installed in targeted locations that have a high concentration of cigarette butts, including entrances to apartment buildings, office buildings and bars.   Mitchell personally walked the streets over the past three years to identify the locations, which he has marked on a map of the district. In one location, Mitchell and his wife collected 1,500 discarded butts in one hour.   "It's very labor intensive to pick up cigarette butts. It's much harder than other litter," Mitchell said.   The boxes will be emptied regularly by volunteers with the neighborhood association's Clean Streets program, which was formed to pick up litter in the district six months ago because of concerns about livability.   Boxes in one part of the district will be emptied by employees of Clean and Safe, a program affiliated with the Portland Business Association that helps clean up downtown streets.   Other project partners include the R2C Group, an advertising firm in the district that has sponsored 10 boxes and is developing a donated public awareness campaign that will stress the environmental hazards of cigarette butts. It will include posters and targeted social media advertising.   "R2C Group fully supports PDNA's efforts to remove toxic cigarette butts from our streets and our parks. We're eager to utilize our advertising expertise to communicate the benefits of this program, illustrate where to find the disposal bins, and how to use them," said Michelle Cardinal, CEO and co-founder of R2C Group.     Another partner is Central City Concern, a nonprofit social service agency, which operates residential drug and alcohol treatment programs in the district where clients frequently smoke on the sidewalks.   The program is the most recent of several efforts to better clean up the city. Mayor Ted Wheeler proclaimed Portland should be "the cleanest and most livable city in the United States" in September 2018. He subsequently announced the "Keep it Pretty, Rose City" program that includes the purchase and installation of large-capacity garbage cans throughout town that are emptied more frequently than before.     Mitchell applauds the new cans, but says smokers know not to throw their butts into them.   "I've talked to many smokers during the course of researching this, and they know they're a fire hazard," Mitchell said.   Wheeler has endorsed the butts project, and so has Commissioner Nick Fish.   Other cities already working with TerraCycle include Seattle, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Vancouver, British Columbia. Mitchell said he hopes other neighborhoods in Portland will be inspired to launch similar programs.   "Cigarette butts are a problem everywhere," Mitchell said.

OCEAN CITY – Following the success of a cigarette disposal initiative near the Boardwalk this summer, a resort committee began a discussion this month on expanding efforts to the Maryland-Delaware line. Earlier this summer, the town installed cigarette butt receptacles – or butt huts – along with signage stating, “smoking prohibited beyond this point,” on the side streets to the west of the Boardwalk. In doing so, resort officials had hoped the containers would encourage smokers to properly dispose of cigarette butts. Last year, it was determined the town’s Boardwalk smoking ban had led to a larger issue of cigarette butt litter accumulating at the street ends adjacent to the promenade. In a meeting this month of the Ocean City Green Team, Councilman Tony DeLuca, chair of the committee, highlighted the successful butt hut program. “People were actually putting cigarette butts in them,” he said. “That was unbelievable.” DeLuca said the next step was to replace certain containers to the west of the Boardwalk with larger butt huts and expand the program to include more street ends. “We need to expand it now from the end of the Boardwalk to the Delaware line,” he said, “every single street.” Public Works Director Hal Adkins told the committee that crews would be replacing the butt huts on certain streets between now and next May. However, he said expanding the program could require more manpower. “They are not difficult to build, they are not difficult to install, but the issue will be the collection process …,” he said. “It all comes down to what volume we end up experiencing. There will be a few streets out there where we’ll probably collect once or twice the whole summer and we’ll be fine. Then you are going to have other ones with higher frequency that I can’t guarantee you I’ll have the manpower to get to them.” Committee members this week also discussed private efforts to reduce cigarette butt litter in Ocean City. At the same time the town installed its butt huts near the Boardwalk, a partnership with the Maryland Coastal Bays Program (MCBP) provided similar containers to private businesses throughout the resort. However, the second prong of a two-pronged approach did not experience the same success. Sandi Smith, marketing and development coordinator for MCBP, said challenges included the installation of the butt huts at private businesses and the collection of the cigarette butts, which were combined with the resort’s cigarette litter and shipped off to be recycled. “At Coastal Bays, we like to create projects for the community and partner on projects, but we are not here to run projects …,” she said. “You are looking at the person that shoveled the 313,500 cigarette butts and put them in boxes to mail to TerraCycle.” While the program received positive feedback, Smith said only half of the participating businesses had installed the butt huts. She added that those who did use the containers did not always recycle the contents. “We said from the very beginning the worst case is they empty them into the garbage can …,” DeLuca noted. “But at least they aren’t on the streets and all over the curb. They aren’t recycled, but they aren’t in the bays and ocean.” Smith told the committee that MCBP had received grant funding to pay for someone to develop a plan for improving the program. She said the next step would be to work with the town and find someone who can run the program and focus on source-reduction efforts. “To make it sustainable you need to create a position and figure out how we as a city can fund it,” she said.

MADISON, Wis. - The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is recognizing 10 recycling programs from a mix of businesses, schools, nonprofits and local governments with the 2019 Wisconsin Recycling Excellence Awards. In honor of America Recycles Day on Nov. 15, the DNR is recognizing four entities for "overall operations of a recycling program," four entities for "special projects and initiatives" and two entities for program "innovation." "It is exciting to see communities and businesses find new ways to reduce waste and recycle," DNR Waste and Materials Management Program Director Joe Van Rossum said. "We want to promote these efforts and share how we divert materials from landfills in Wisconsin." The Overall Program Awards recognize efforts that are robust and continually improving while demonstrating a commitment to improving the overall recycling or diversion program. * The city of New Richmond went through a comprehensive update of its residential recycling services, which the city had not revisited since 1996. In 2018, the city began round table discussions with recycling contractors and utilized an online and paper survey to solicit input from the community. The analysis led to a conversion to automated single-stream recycling. The city also works with TerraCycle to recycle cigarette filters in its downtown district.

In 2018 the City of Victoria installed 50 cigarette butt canisters around the city in an effort to keep the streets and storm drains cleaner, and locals have been following suit. So far, more than 100,000 cigarette butts, weighing in at over 100 kg, have been collected.   The cylindrical canisters hang off of poles and posts in high-traffic areas, with a clearly-marked cigarette emblem on the side. Some of the canisters, said Rory Tooke, manager of sustainability, need to be changed daily, while others only need to be changed weekly.   “Public feedback has been very positive, and we receive many requests to install more canisters,” Tooke said in an emailed statement. “We expect collection to increase as more smokers become aware, and as the City continues to expand the number of canisters.”   The collected butts are then shipped over to the Greater Toronto area for processing. TerraCycle specializes in processing difficult-to-recycle materials, and turns the cigarette butts into plastic pellets used to create a wide range of new products.   nicole.crescenzi@vicnews.com

Every year, billions of cigarette butts end up littered on roadways, beaches, in parks and just about everywhere else you can imagines. They are toxic and full of chemicals, plastic components and ash that can pollute waterways and harm wildlife. Believe it or not, they are recyclable! The company TerraCycle has collection boxes that will take old igarettes through a recycling program.

Every year, billions of cigarette butts end up littered on roadways, beaches, in parks and just about everywhere else you can imagine. THey are toxic and full of chemicals, plastic components and ash that can pollute waterways and harm wildlife.

Volunteers from the group Sherbrooke en transition (SET) headed to the CHUS Fleurimont Monday as part of the initiative, Operation Zero Butts. The goal of the operation was threefold: to make smokers aware of the importance of not tossing their cigarette butts, to divert hundreds of cigarette butts from the environment, and to recover them and send them to Toronto-based company Terracycle where the ash and tobacco are composted, and remaining material is melted into hard plastic and remolded into industrial products. “Studies have shown that a single cigarette butt can contaminate 500 litres of water. In the snow, we talk about one cubic metre of contamination. All the toxic agents released end up in our soils and waterways,” explained Karyne Blanchette, SET member and co-organizer of the ‘Operation Zero Butts’ event. 

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. (WJHG) - A local nonprofit is working to keep butts off our beaches. Keep PCB Beautiful has already cleaned up dozens of pounds of cigarette litter. For this week's Everyday Heroes we take a closer look at the Cigarette Litter Prevention Campaign.   "We have America's most beautiful beaches and we are here to help keep them that way and to make them even better, also to give people a way to be part of the solution," said Kim Christian, Spokesperson for Keep PCB Beautiful.   Keep PCB Beautiful kicked off a Cigarette Litter Prevention Campaign back in April after receiving a grant from Keep America Beautiful. Fifty-four cigarette receptacles were installed across Panama City Beach at the City Pier, Frank Brown Park, Pier Park and local restaurants, like Pineapple Willy's.   "Most people don't think the cigarette butts are trash, so they don't really clean-up after themselves, but it's very important because it is trash and we want to keep our beaches the most beautiful beaches, and during the summer during our beach clean-up, cigarette butts were the number one item picked up everyday," said Melissa Traxler, Pineapple Willy's CEO.   The cigarette receptacles aren't just on land, they're also out at sea. Keep PCB Beautiful partnered with Captain Anderson's to take some of the cigarette receptacles out on their fishing boats.   "As you know people are prone to sometimes throw their cigarette butt into the water just because it is convenient. It's there, but it's not the right thing to do, so they have offered generously to deck out every single one of our head boats with a cigarette receptacle and I can just tell you it has been outstanding, they are quickly filling up," said Chelsea Ray, Marketing Director for Captain Anderson's Marina.   According to a study done by Keep America Beautiful, more than 70 percent of people who participated in the study didn't think cigarettes were litter. Since the campaign started in April, the nonprofit has collected more than 30 pounds of cigarette butts.   "They hardly biodegrade, it takes up to 10 years and when they do biodegrade they release toxins into our environment," Christian said. "We are not here to tell people to stop smoking, we are just here if you are going to smoke just put your cigarette butt in the proper receptacle."   All the recycled butts are given to TerraCycle, a recycling company that makes the plastic found in cigarette butts into furniture.   To date, Keep PCB Beautiful has cleaned 48 miles of shoreline. The group will be applying for another grant in the hopes of placing more cigarette receptacles around Panama City Beach.   Copyright 2019 WJHG. All rights reserved.