Sidmouth Plastic Warriors > cleaning up cigarette butts Saturday 23rd March

We've got a problem with a type of plastic pollution which most of us don't realise is plastic pollution:
Futures Forum: Cigarette butts are plastic pollution

One idea is for the producers to pay for this pollution:
Futures Forum: Plastic pollution: make big tobacco responsible for their cigarette butt pollution

Another is for a local system to collect the cigarette butts:
Futures Forum: TerraCycle comes to Sidmouth > a project to collect and recycle cigarette butts
Futures Forum: Sidmouth Plastic Warriors > beach clean tomorrow Saturday 26th October > and the Terracycle programme to recycle cigarette butts

And at the next Plastic Warriors event, there'll be a focus on these - as much about gathering information as picking up litter:

Next Clean Up - Saturday March 23rd

Dear Plastic Warriors Supporter

The next clean up is a town one - we are aiming to pick up ALL the cigarette butts in the town, and record where the worst areas are. We can use this data to try to apply for some funding for some cigarette bins to go in those areas - if we can also get agreement from EDDC to have them emptied. Talking to some of the lovely Streetscene staff, the Big Belly bins on the seafront are a total waste of space when it comes to most things, in particular the cigarette bins on the side of them. They have locks which must be opened in order to empty them, which have corroded because of the salt on the sea front, but worse than that, most of the bottoms of them have broken off, so even if smokers are putting their butts in them they are just falling out of the bottom. We also have bins in town that have ash trays built in to the top, but when the staff empty them they tend to all fall out... not ideal. A new approach is needed, and the attached flyer shows that we are going to try and highlight the issue. We think that quite a lot of smokers also don't realise that the filters are made from plastic, and leach toxins into water (1 butt can heavily polute 5 litres of water! More information can be found here)

Please share the flyer, and of course come along if you possibly can. It's 2-3pm, meeting outside at Dukes (and staying for a drink afterwards once we've built up a thirst). I will bring the equipment as usual, but this time we can have teams for a little 'competition' [more for inspiration than prizes I stress] so if you have a clipboard and pen, please bring that along!

I have been busy catching up with blog posts today so do take a look at the website page - http://sidmouthplasticwarriors.org/blog/

We had a very generous donation through the Paypal button on the website the other day so I have ordered some more litter pickers as we ran out for the last two clean ups, a great sign of course!

I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on the 23rd

Thanks

Denise

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Denise Bickley
Sidmouth Plastic Warriors
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/181478989253793/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SidPlasticWar
Website: http://sidmouthplasticwarriors.org/

Sidmouth Plastic Warriors – Doing everything in our power to get Sidmouth single-use-plastic-free
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