Chalk Of Shame: How This Youngsters Group Is Spreading Awareness About Cigarette Butt Pollution
It is small and is often thought to be harmless and can be seen littered all around the streets and roads by those who use and throw it away without a second thought.
We are talking here about cigarette butts - the tiny pieces of cotton left behind after smocking.
In fact, cigarette butts outnumber plastic bottles and straws when it comes to being the biggest pollutant that is harming the environment.
And unlike popular belief, cigarette butts are not cotton, but cellulose acetate, a plastic material.
As it is made up of chemicals, cigarette butts as they degrade over the years will discharge many of those toxic substances into the environment, land and water bodies.
But during the COVID-19 pandemic, discarded cigarette butts also poses a health risk, especially for the sanitation staff whose job it is to clear them from the streets.
Keeping this in mind, a group of youngsters from Pune has come up with an innovative campaign to end the menace of cigarette butt pollution and raise awareness about it.
The group, Pune Ploggers, who was previously involved in various clean-up drives along the city are now on the lookout for discarded cigarette butts.
But, instead of collecting them, the group draw circles around them with colorful chalks and write sarcastic comments around them.
"We call this the chalk of shame, and the aim is to shame and create awareness around the ill-effects of cigarette butt pollution. We started this on the day of Diwali when people will be drawing rangolis, we were drawing these ciricles," Vivek Gurav, founder of the initiative told Indiatimes.
According to Gurav, the drive has helped in creating awareness among both vendors and smokers alike on something that they have been doing for a long time, without realising its consequences.
Collecting cigarette butts for a year now
"As part of the plogging, we have been collecting cigarette butts from the streets for nearly a year now. But once we pick up and move on someone else will do the same again. So instead of picking them up, if we make a colourful circle around it and make it stand out, the smokers themselves will get to seethe number of cigarette butts being dumped on the roads every day," Gurav explained.
He also added that picking up the discarded cigarette butts from the streets could be a health risk for the ploggers due to COVID-19.
Since they launched the drive, the group of nearly 50 has so far conducted nearly a dozen such drives in Pune.
Gurav said that despite the pandemic and the floods in Pune, a large section of the society is still unaware of the consequences of discarding plastic waste on the streets.
"One of the major causes of the waterlogging was due to the clogged drainages which were choked with plastic waste. We have seen some improvement since we began plogging, but the issue of cigarette butts was never talked about, as they are very small to be noticed. With our chalk of shame, we are creating awereness about it," he said.
