Cobourg looks for Butt Blitz volunteers

Photo by Dan Jones. CFWN, LJI

By Cecilia Nasmith

The Town of Cobourg is looking for volunteers to help clean up cigarette litter along the Cobourg waterfront and Victoria Park Saturday, Sept. 19, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The Butt Blitz is planned in collaboration with A Greener Future, calling on volunteers to meet at 11 a.m. at the Marina office (103 Third St.) to pick up supplies – gloves, buckets and garbage grabbers (volunteers are also welcome to bring their own grabbers and buckets).

Cigarette butts are the most-littered items in the world – about two-thirds of the six-trillion cigarettes smoked each year end up in the environment. Due to their small size, they are often missed by the street sweeper. And during public clean-up events, many are left because they are buried in sand or leaves, or wedged into pavement cracks.

While the white filters look like cotton, they are made of cellulose acetate, a plastic that degrades into microplastic fibres that do not decompose naturally.

Depending on where they are tossed, cigarette butts take roughly 18 months to 10 years to break down. When they are thrown into water, they release nicotine, arsenic, tar and heavy minerals. A single butt can contaminate up to 1,000 litres of water.

All material collected will be recycled through the TerraCycle program that repurposes these otherwise-unrecyclable items into usable products.

A Greener Future has set a goal of collecting one-million butts, enough to create a community bench to be installed somewhere in Ontario (with volunteers helping decide where it goes).

You can register on the September UNSMOKE Butt Blitz webpage at Cobourg Marina Butt Blitz | September 19, 2026 — A Greener Future