Packed with grabbers, vests and garbage bags, Schoon Westfriesland is going out today to clean up discarded cigarette filters in the region. Cleaning up the filters is part of the annual campaign ‘Plastic cigarette butt’. “We want to create awareness, and especially call on people not to throw them on the street anymore.”
The substances that remain in a cigarette filter can cause a lot of damage to nature. For example, one butt can already provide 1,000 liters of polluted water, according to research by CE Delft. “The nicotine from a butt alone appears to pollute 400 liters of water. The rest of the pollution is caused by the more than 4,000 other toxins from a butt,” explains Schoon Westfriesland.
Counted and registered
The clean-up operation is part of an international initiative, which is being organized in ten different countries. The action counts and registers all filters that have been collected. Those who want to participate themselves can also indicate this and have it counted in the national figures.
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In recent years, Schoon Westfriesland has organized several special clean-up days. Even then, cigarette filters in the streets and parks of the region were cleared away. “With a group of volunteers, we removed more than 40,000 filters from nature last year,” says Lars Verberne, who ensures a cleaner street scene in Enkhuizen.
“And that in about two hours. Because we put them in transparent buckets, we got a lot of reactions from people who were surprised about the large number of butt filters we collected.”
Create awareness
The discarded filters are especially difficult to clean up after it has rained, says Verberne. “They then become wet and soft, and then lie between the joints on the street, for example. At a certain point, the sweepers can no longer take them.”
Verberne is pleased with the positive reactions that the cleaning teams receive when they are collecting the waste, and says that there is increasing social pressure to throw away waste – such as cigarette filters – in a waste bin. “We also want to create awareness with this action. There is a change going on, but it won’t happen 1-2-3,” he explains. “Every step forward is one. We especially want to call for people to stop throwing cigarette filters on the street.”
Today, under the name ‘Plastic butt waste’, people are cleaning up in Andijk, Enkhuizen, Hoogkarspel, Hoorn, Medemblik and Wervershoof. According to Schoon Westfriesland, anyone who wants to is welcome to help.
Watch the interview with Lars Verberne below, who is committed to cleaning up the discarded filters.
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