650,000 cigarette butts collected in one week

“We asked everyone in Portugal to take part in this community project to draw attention to plastic pollution,” the initiator of the campaign, 34-year-old German Andreas Noe, told the AFP news agency on Sunday. Because many people are not aware that there is plastic hidden in cigarette butts.

A single cigarette butt is a good example of “how everyone can start doing something” about pollution and the climate crisis in general, Noe said. Within a week, the participants in the campaign had collected enough cigarette butts to fill around 40 plastic beer kegs. They then dumped the butts onto plastic wrap.

“We want to end this problem by encouraging people to throw their cigarette butts in the bin or in pocket ashtrays – anywhere but on the floor,” said Noe’s collaborator David Figueira. Noe moved to Portugal six years ago and is now fully committed to protecting the environment. Two years ago he had already collected around a million cigarette butts in two months.