Cobourg calls on residents to help clear beach, park of cigarette butts

The Town of Cobourg is asking residents to participate in a cigarette litter clean-up effort along the Cobourg waterfront on Saturday, Sept. 19. /Natalie Hamilton photo

By West Northumberland Independent staff

There are no “butts” about it – Cobourg is inviting residents to help clear the beach and nearby Victoria Park of discarded cigarettes.

The Town of Cobourg, in collaboration with A Greener Future, is calling on community volunteers to help clean-up cigarette litter along the Cobourg waterfront and in Victoria Park on Saturday, Sept. 19 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Volunteers will meet at 11 a.m. at the marina office, which is located at 103 Third St. Supplies, including gloves, buckets and “garbage grabbers,” will be available for use. Volunteers are also welcome to bring their own grabbers and buckets.

People can register to take part on the September UNSMOKE Butt Blitz webpage via https://www.agreenerfuture.ca/events-list/cobourg-marina-butt-blitz-september-2026.

All material collected will be recycled through the TerraCycle UNSMOKE cigarette recycling program, noted the town, in a press release.

The TerraCycle program recycles butts, which are otherwise unrecyclable products, into usable items.

Cigarette butts are the most-littered item in the world, officials noted. About two-thirds of the six trillion cigarettes smoked each year end up in the environment.

“Although the white filters look like cotton, they are made of cellulose acetate, a plastic that breaks apart into microplastic fibres and does not decompose naturally,” explained the town. “Depending on where they are discarded, cigarette butts take roughly 18 months to 10 years to break down.”

When butts end up in water, they release nicotine, arsenic, tar and heavy metals. A single littered cigarette butt can contaminate up to 1,000 litres of water, the release reads.

“Unfortunately, due to their small size, cigarette butts are often missed by the street sweeper and during public clean-up events. Many (cigarettes) end up buried in sand, leaves or wedged in cracks in the pavement.”

A Greener Future has set a goal of collecting 1,000,000 cigarette butts – the amount needed to turn cigarette litter into “something permanent and positive.”

The collected material will be used to create a community bench to be installed somewhere in Ontario, with volunteers helping decide where it goes.