It Starts With Me: September 2015

Our Daily Ocean

Cigarette butts are the #1 littered item worldwide... my local beach-- Wrightsville Beach, NC-- is no exception. With inspiration from my friend Sara who writes The Daily Ocean blog, I've started my own daily ocean. I'll head out to WB at varying beach accesses and pick up litter for 20 minutes.

My focus? Cigarette butts.

My mission? To help create a smoke-free beach and have proper cigarette butt disposal receptacles installed on WB became a reality! WB is the first smoke-free beach in NC!

58,169 cigarette butts in 253 days

Litter weight added to The Daily Ocean Community Count:

388 lbs 4.4 oz

The Daily Ocean Cigarette Count

For the next 100 beach cleanups, my friend Sara who writes The Daily Ocean blog will be counting and tallying the number of cigarette butts she finds during her 20 minute beach clean ups in Santa Monica-- a SMOKE-FREE beach.

We're comparing a smoke-free beach (Santa Monica) to a beach with no smoking ban (Wrightsville Beach). We hope to answer the question:

Do smoking bans really help the cigarette litter problem?

100 beach clean ups-- 740 cigarette butts in Santa Monica

Per cleanup AVG: 7

57 beach clean ups-- 12,630 cigarette butts in Wrightsville Beach (March 2012- March 2013*)

Per cleanup AVG: 222

43 beach clean ups-- 2,610 (April 2013- Dec. 2013*)

Per cleanup AVG: 61

*As WB is now a smoke-free beach, I've separated the tally.

It Starts With Me

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Friday, September 4, 2015

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