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Cigarette butts in our community
Written by Fernie Secondary School Grade 8 students
On May 27, Grade 8 students at Fernie Secondary School picked up cigarette butts around town. The reason for this act was to help our town’s environment and water system by clearing the toxic butts.
When you throw your butts on the ground, they make their way through the Elk River and eventually to the Pacific Ocean, after falling through storm drains.
Studies have shown that a cigarette butt submerged in one litre of water can kill one fish because of the toxins in the butt. Cigarettes are extremely toxic; they contain things like gasoline, rat poison, and tar. The very harmful chemicals will cause cancer in humans as well as wildlife. We need to keep our butts off the ground by putting them in the provided ashtrays or garbage cans.
Over two hours, 34 students picked up a grand total of 7,700 cigarette butts. The average butt weighs 0.39g—the total weight of the butts we picked up was a whopping 2,995 grams! We found the highest quantity of these deadly butts at 7-11, the Royal Hotel, the Elk Valley Hospital and the baseball diamonds by our school.
We are not saying that you need to quit smoking or tell your friends to, but after reading this article we hope you think twice about throwing your butts on the ground, and take responsibility for where they end up. Thanks for reading, we hope you realize how deadly cigarette butts can be to our community.
This inspiring Student Action Project was initiated by the students themselves as part of Know Your Watershed, a program of the Columbia Basin Trust administered and delivered by Wildsight.
Columbia Basin Trust supports efforts to deliver social, economic and environmental benefits to the residents of the Columbia Basin. To learn more about the Trust’s programs and initiatives, visit cbt.org or call 1-800-505-8998.
