HISTORY OF THE
                                                              NO BUTTS ABOUT IT CAMPAIGN


For a holiday present in the mid-1990s, our parents signed us up to be an Adopt-a-Shore family in Boca Raton, Florida. We - Amy, Allie, and Dave - were responsible for cleaning up a certain portion of the beach four times every year. As we did more and more cleanups, we noticed that we kept picking up massive amounts of cigarette butts. We couldn’t understand why adults would take the time to throw out garbage and even small papers like gum wrappers, but would simply drop their butts without a care. We decided to keep a tally of the different kinds of garbage that we collected, and we found that cigarette butts hugely outnumbered all other types of litter. In fact, the Center for Marine Conservation’s coastal cleanup statistics verifies that cigarette butts are the number one form of litter annually and far outnumber all other types. Through kids' eyes, this was ridiculous that everyone was careful about not littering even a small gum wrapper, but cigarette butts were just dropped onto the ground, and especially on the beach - one of the most natural places! Together, we drew a poster that depicted the Earth as a giant ashtray, and pretty soon, our city had it hanging at the beach gatehouses. We also found free disposable ashtrays that were handed out there. At our next beach cleanup, the amount of littered butts that we tallied were reduced, and we were on our road to making a difference.

Other beach towns were contacted, parks, cities with sidewalks, everywhere - we started letter writing and emailing - in those days, we didn't have too much homework and had lots of time to pester people! But it worked, slowly but surely. People commented that it had bothered them but they never did anything about it. When our family moved to Connecticut, the littered cigarette butts plagued all of our new favorite places – walking trails, other beaches, hiking paths. We modified the poster, added compelling facts, and created our website so we could reach out easier, quicker, and without the cost of postage. The poster started getting hung up - at a picnic area in an apartment complex in Los Angeles, state parks in Virginia, a beach in North Carolina, throughout the downtown section of a huge midwest city - everywhere. Butt awareness was being raised, the change in conduct was spreading, and the Earth was getting cleaner.