Cigarette butt litter is a huge global issue. Among many huge global issues.

https://www.thejournal.ie/littering-cigarette-butts-4721025-Jul2019/ <- total littering could be halved if cigarette littering could be stopped.

Cigarette butt litter is also a local problem, insofar as it happens locally.

So why does it happen?

This study indicates that the only attitude or belief that had measurable impact on a smoker’s tendency to drop their butts was whether or not they believed butts to be litter. (3.5-4 times more likely to drop butts if believing they are not litter) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3397372/

My own reasoning (no data, pure bro-science) says that it’s also due to social proof – there are always cigarette butts on the floor – and the lack of anywhere better to put the cigarette butt.

Any solution must address at least those three parameters:

  1. Educate that butts are litter and toxic.
  2. Remove or invert social proof (remove other cigarette butts, or normalise trashing butts instead of dropping them).
  3. Provide an alternative solution to littering.

Project: Ashtray phases

Project is loosely run in phases to see what happens given different stimuli

Phase 1: Remove social proof.

As an initial test, some friends and I removed all cigarette butts (and other litter) from the immediate neighbourhood weekly for a period of 4 weeks.

No change was observed, and littering continued.

Notes:

  1. It was observed that people approved – many people thanked us for the work.
  2. People took evident notice of what we were doing.
  3. One household had a jar on their doorstep in which the collected butts, presumably to bin them later.

Given the note that people took, it’s reasonable to assume that a selection of smokers also noticed. It’s unknown what would happen if we entered into conversation with them about the issue

Phase 2: Education + Ashtrays

Ashtray_1 Ashtray_2 Ashtray_3

Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com
This phase draws inspiration from note #3 in phase 1.

I grabbed some glass jars from work (thanks, work), and stuck labels on them. The labels provide brief into on cigarette butts being litter, without moralising. They also make it clear that the point of the creation is to provide an alternative to littering.

Phase 2 to be continued when data is gathered after the deploy.

Notes:

  1. Spoke to 2 smokers on their doorstep – turns out they took butts with them in their pocket ashtrays. Never would have started using pocket ashtrays if they were not given to them for free at an event.
  2. Placing secret ashtrays on random doorsteps felt super spy-like.
  3. It might be necessary to “seed” the ashtrays with some butts to show that they’re in use.
  4. There might be a problem with usage given that 100% of potential users will think it’s someone else’s ashtray, not their own.

Phase 2 conclusion

3 out of the 6 ashtrays are in use, 2 are empty and 1 is gone.

That’s a 50% reduction in doorstep-based cigarette butt litter, and there’s a good chance peer pressure can override the standard behaviour if this approach is scaled to the entire city block.

Next step is getting a crew together and sourcing a larger amount of jars to label.

Ashtray_results_1 Ashtray_results_2 Ashtray_results_3

Pics from the 3 that worked!