Youth Council Combats Tobacco Litter Over Winter Break
By: Orange County Communications Department and the Orange County Office on Youth
The Orange County Youth Council took time over their holiday break to help pick up trash and tobacco litter in the Town of Gordonsville. Twelve youth volunteers, with adult support and assistance from Orange County Litter Control, combed the streets in teams to locate and remove any litter. This cleanup is held twice a year, once in the Town of Orange (usually during the spring) and once in Gordonsville (in the fall or winter) Tobacco litter was kept separate from other forms of waste in order to get an estimate on the number of cigarette butts collected based on weight. Based on these calculations, the team cleaned up approximately 4,080 cigarette butts! According to Keep America Beautiful ’ s most recent litter study, “ Cigarette butts continue to be the single most littered item in the United States, even though cigarette butt litter has declined
Cigarette butts continue to be the singe most littered item in the Unites States. 1
dramatically since 2009. Plastic films, both general use films and food - packaging films, such as candy wrappers or snack bags, represent
the second and third most littered items in America. ” 1 On a related note, Orange County residents can reduce plastic film litter by bringing such items to one of our six collection receptacles at County offices. Through our participation in the NexTrex program, we will receive one high - quality composite bench whenever we collect 1,000 pounds of recyclable plastic film material. Despite the encouraging decline, cigarette and other tobacco litter is still significant, an estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered worldwide each year. The toxic impacts of such litter have been shown to be harmful to wildlife 2 and have many other negative impacts. We ’ re proud of the dedication displayed by our youth to make a positive impact at each of these events.
1 Keep America Beautiful . Keep America Beautiful 2020 National Litter Study Summary Report. Keep America Beautiful; San Marcos, CA, USA: 2021. [(accessed on 10 January 2023)]. 2 Slaughter, E., Gersberg, R. M., Watanabe, K., Rudolph, J., Stransky, C., & Novotny, T. E. (2011). Toxicity of cigarette butts, and their chemical components, to marine and freshwater fish. Tobacco control, 20 Suppl 1(Suppl_1), i25–i29. https://doi.org/10.1136/tc.2010.040170
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