The vision is for a butt free Australia

Butt Free City Campaign

Butt Free City Week was an outstanding success with over 1037 pledges made by Townsville smokers to use personal ashtrays and responsibly dispose of their cigarette butts to help the environment.

A fantastic result, which eclipsed the original campaign aim to collect 840 pledges over the five days.

Butt Free City Week 2006 was launched in Townsville in March by Mayor Cr. Tony Mooney.

Butt Free City Week is about reducing the cigarette butt litter that is dropped in our CBD and urban areas through encouraging positive behavioural change.

Townsville City Council in partnership with the Butt Littering Trust, whose vision is for a butt free Australia, sent out a team of 'educators' to promote the responsible disposal of cigarette butts in city hot spots.

They provided information and gave smokers personal ashtrays and asked them to pledge that they would 'Please Butt It, Then Bin It'.

The campaign was well received by the public with many saying it was a 'great idea' and that personal ashtrays were "fantastic" and "very cool".

Approximately 1600 personal ashtrays were distributed to the CBD during the week.

Reports from others that were involved in the Butt Free City campaign also showed positive results - with a total of 12,000 pledges collected in seven cities.

City hot spots were audited for butts before the event and will be measured again to check the effectiveness of the campaign.

The National Litter Index, prepared by Keep Australia Beautiful, says that butts make up 46% (national average) of the litter stream by number.

Results achieved by the Butt Littering Trust and partner Councils in 2005 include:

• an average of 9.9% reduction in cigarette butt littering across Australia;
  
  
• distribution of over 29,000 resources;
  
  
• engaged over 10,000 smokers.
  
  

Hopefully this year will see that record broken!

For more information on the Butt Littering Trust,
visit: www.buttlitteringtrust.org

An Initiative of: