‘No Butts About It Day’ at UMass Amherst on Nov. 8
Oct. 28, 2009
| Contact: | Tom Schiff 413/577-5133 |
AMHERST, Mass. – The fourth annual “No Butts About It Day” at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, when members of the community with gloves and trash bags hunt for and dispose of cigarette butts littering the campus, takes place Sunday, Nov. 8 from noon – 3 p.m.
The event, organized by the Student Health Advisory Board (SHAB) at University Health Services, hopes to rid the campus of the leftovers from people’s smoke breaks that were dropped and forgotten on walkways, in front of buildings and in the grass. The collected butts will be used as part of several displays in the Berkshire, Franklin and Worcester dining commons, planned in conjunction with the American Cancer Society’s “Great American Smokeout” on Nov. 19.
Last year, 12 pounds of butts were picked up in just three hours. The advisory board raises awareness of health issues and provides information for the health center’s programs and services at UMass.
The “No Butts About It” project was selected because it promotes both a healthy lifestyle and a healthy environment within the campus community and was developed with the support of the American Cancer Society’s Colleges Against Cancer program. Volunteers are needed to pick up butts and to staff collection sites.
Facts from the City of Berkeley Tobacco Control Program:
• Cigarette butts take an average of 25 years to decompose.
• Cigarette butts are washed from city streets into rivers, lakes and oceans through storm drains. Seabirds, animals and fish eat them by mistake and die because they can’t digest the filters.
• On average, a tree is cut down for every 300 cigarettes — about a two-week supply for a pack-a-day smoker.
• The tobacco industry burns as much as one acre of forest for every acre of tobacco cured, using 12 percent of all the timber felled in the world.
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