Street blitz collects 39,306 cigarette butts

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This article was published 24/08/2020 (1872 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Take Pride Winnipeg head Tom Ethans may be okay with ifs and ands, but he’d like to see no butts on the streets and sidewalks of Winnipeg.

Ethans, the executive director of the charitable organization with the mission to instil pride in Winnipeggers and help make the city clean, said a group of summer students and volunteers went out last week and collected 39,306 discarded cigarette butts littered throughout the city.

“This is an incredible amount of cigarette butts,” he said on Monday.

“They went out for an hour per day and they found them tossed on the ground. People have to realize this is littering — people have to know that.”

Ethans said it has been a couple of years since his organization last went on a butt blitz, but this year is the highest amount ever collected.

Ethans said while they went across the city, including the West End, Corydon Avenue’s Little Italy, Transcona, downtown and the Exchange District, there was one street especially bad.

“The worst was Graham Avenue, from The Bay to Fort Street,” he said. “We found 5,117 butts. And that was in just one hour.

“Overall 30 to 35 per cent of the litter on the street are cigarette butts. People have to be more responsible. They don’t break down.”

Ethans said he transported all of the butts in bags in his car and put them in his garage — “my car and garage stink so bad” — boxed them up and shipped them for free through UPS to TerraCycle.

According to the TerraCycle website, people who sign up are able to print out free mailing labels, which includes the UPS fee, and ship them to the waste recycler which is able to turn the butts, as well as all the other components of the cigarette package except for the cardboard box, into a variety of different items, including plastic pallets.

TerraCycle says the actual tobacco is recycled as compost.

Ethan said he hopes the butt blitz helps Winnipeg smokers realize they should properly dispose of their cigarettes when they are done smoking.

“We’re trying to keep this city clean and beautiful,” he said. “Let’s change what we’re doing.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca