Cigarette Butt Bins!

Trash is EVERYWHERE. In our oceans, animals, roads, forests, and some of our world has even been created on top of trash mountains. Trash is killing our planet. We don’t want to sit back and watch our world crumble and fall. One of the things we hate so much is watching somebody finish a cigarette and then flick the cigarette onto the ground and walk away. We have seen people throw cigarettes out the car window while driving! We see cigarettes everywhere, even when there is a trash can nearby. They are by far the most common type of trash that we see in our area. We can’t stand it. One of our dads also really hated these litterbugs and the cigarettes they were leaving all over the neighborhood. So, he created (cigarette) butt bins. Butt bins are small painted flower pots that are attached to a telephone pole. They also come with laminated signs explaining their purpose. They are there so that smokers have an easy place to put their cigarettes and will stop littering everywhere. But people have been taking some of them down! We don’t know who, or why, but several have disappeared. For our project, we wanted to help solve the problem of the cigarette butts by making more butt bins and distributing them to more areas. We want to see our cities be more beautiful and clean!
We began by buying the flower pots, some pipe clamps, the screws and the washers. These were easy to find, and can be bought at a local hardware store. Supplies for fifteen butt bins only cost about $45. Once we got the flower pots, we painted them with acrylic paints and waited for them to dry. We decided to paint the butt bins with some cheery colors and patterns to make the bins POP and look more inviting. Next we prepared the signs and laminated them. We chose a worthy telephone pole, and used a staple gun to mount the laminated sign. We found a crack in the telephone pole, and screwed the pipe clamp in to the crack. We inserted the painted pot, and voila, we had our first butt bin.
Some small challenges that we had to overcome are the laminator crisis and the printing fiasco. Elena has a laminator but unfortunately the laminator-stuff ran out before we were done laminating all of our signs! We came up with the idea of just using scotch tape to laminate them, which works almost as well. Also, we didn’t have a colored printer so Elena’s dad kindly offered to print them at his work. One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced are some haters who have been completely ignoring, or even removing our butt bins! I’ve seen cigarettes lying right on the ground near the butt bin! We were frustrated and a little sad that we gave people an easy alternative to littering, and they just ignored it.
We put up a butt bin near one of our favorite cafes, Hudson Bay Café. It was a good spot, a lot of people went there so there were a lot of cigarettes. I am so glad that the Hudson Bay Café dumped out the bin when it was empty, we didn’t always have time. Back to the story: one day, the butt bin outside of Hudson was taken down. We couldn’t find a replacement very fast but luckily the amazing people at Hudson Bay Café came to the rescue! They put up their own butt bin, not the same but it still worked the same. We still see it when we go to Hudson for a drink and treat and are eternally grateful that they found a solution! We found it very inspiring that they chose to create their own butt bin instead of just ignoring the fact that ours was taken down.
The maker faire at BPC went really well! We were so happy to see so many people that were supportive of our idea! It was nice to find out that there are so many good people in this world that are working for a better future. All of the cigarette butt bins that we were giving out were taken before the faire was even halfway over. We were very pleased!!! It was really nice to see that so many people were willing to participate in our project! Sadly, we found two abandoned bins in the Q-Lab but we will put them up soon. A big thank you to everyone who took a bin!