A new (kind of) culprit in town!

Anyone notice more and more of these gnarly cigarette filters littering our great outdoors?

We do!

And it's quite sad, disgusting, and takes cigarette filters to a whole other level!

The volume and weight of one of these PLASTIC filters has got to have the equivalent of a bottled water cap or 50+ standard plastic fibrous filters we all know all too well.

I tried to get a comment from Middleton who manufactures them (An Altria/Philip Morris Co.) but they unsurprisingly declined! They too have absolutely no program in place to address this litter.

As if I wasn't already extremely disturbed with the irresponsibility of smokers who litter, this litter probably won't ever break down/biodegrade.

The photo shows how many of these NEW filters were part of a 4,875 batch of butts that Sophia & Alyson hand collected from the Mission Beach area.

Like all nonprofits, we need your "time" or "money" (or both).

Awesome Surf's Up Challenge: http://www.ripplelife.org/surfsup.php

Saturday Sept 24th volunteering: http://www.ripplelife.org/butts/

Create a Ripple (it's free) which can support Surfrider: http://www.ripplelife.org/curtis

Join our social networks.

Cheers,

Curtis

www.RippleLife.org

Bye Bye Butts

Bye Bye Butts - Surf's Up Challenge!

We've got a cool idea on how to spread awareness of how abundant cigarette butt litter is. We need your help to collect 150,000 littered cigarette butts! To make this a sweet deal, a brand new custom surfboard built just for you is up for grabs!

Like the idea? Lots of spots still open!

More info HERE

HOTYB Awareness Day

Hold On To Your Butt Awareness Day coming August 13 - Get Ready! More info to come in the next month!

Moonlight Beach cleanup more butts collected!

On June 18th, volunteers picked up 228 butts at Moonlight Beach. Thank you clean up crew:)

Hotline calls for May 2011

In May 2011, 174 calls were reported on the HOTYB hotline. Thank you callers for your ongoing reports!

Moonlight Beach cleanup more butts collected!

On May 21, 2011 volunteers cleaned up 288 butts at Moonlight Beach. Many thanks to the volunteers for keeping our beautiful beaches clean!

Pacific Beach Cleanup

We had a special beach cleanup on Friday, May 6, and 1075 butts were collected in PB. Thank you volunteers!

April calls on the hotline

Thanks to the concerned citizens for calling into the HOTYB hotline in April 2011. We had 213 calls about this ongoing issue!

smoking banned in NYC parks

interesting article re banning smoking in NYC parks - http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/opinion/06siegel.html

the author says that the ban was put in place because of 2nd hand smoke, not litter...although we all know that the litter is as if not more serious (and less controversial!)

Mission Bay butts collected

Thanks to the volunteers on 4/30/11 for cleaning up 3,960 cigarette butts at Mission Beach! And to the clean up coordinators for counting this data.