BAG THE BUTTS! to Win $250 Sponsored by The Study Hall

- Private group -
Tue, 04/24/2018 - 8:00am

BAG THE BUTTS! to Win $250 Sponsored by The Study Hall

The 2-day Keep Rockport Beautiful Cleanup Event is this Friday and Saturday, April 27 & 28th.  Sign up to clean a road and you will automatically be entered to win a cash prize! The Study Hall in Rockport has donated $400 to be divided up amongst the teams who pick up the most cigarette butts off of their road route. “Teams” can be either individuals or groups.

1st place prize, $250

2nd place prize, $100

3rd place prize, $50

The Study Hall has partnered with the Rockport Conservation Commission to offer the prize. The purpose of this competition is multilayered: collect valuable data about the amount of filtered cigarette butt waste that exists on Rockport roads, clean the pesky pollutants (often overlooked for larger items during cleanup events), and generate awareness around the hazards of littered tobacco products in our environment.

According to research done by Keep America Beautiful, tobacco products make up 38% of all U.S. roadway litter. Annually 6 trillion cigarettes are consumed. Of those, it is estimated that 75% of the butts are littered or 4.5 trillion butts, equating to approximately 2.2 billion pounds of pollutant waste (Novotny and Slaughter 2014). Filtered cigarette butts contain pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, arsenic, nicotine, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and heavy metals all of which leach into the environment after being tossed (Moerman and Potts 2011; Slaughter et al. 2011).

To participate in this years Keep Rockport Beautiful Cleanup Event, on Friday and Saturday, April 27 & 28, contact Maggie Timmermann at (207) 230-4563 or crcmec@roadrunner.com.

For more information visit their Facebook page Keep Rockport Beautiful Spring 2018 Cleanup Event.