EKU Staff Spend Cinco de Mayo Collecting Cigarette Butts

Approximately 20 faculty and staff spent their Tuesday lunch hour cleaning cigarette butts from campus grounds during the Colonels Kick Butt Team's annual "Butt Pick-Up Event. Participants gathered 6.6 pounds of butts in just one hour. The amount is well below the 15 pounds collected during the first butt pick-up event in 2014.

EKU went 100% tobacco-free on June 1st, 2014. Since then, ambassadors patrol the campus enforcing the policy. Still, some students, faculty and staff have chosen to violate the policy by smoking and vaping on campus. Some have  degraded the campus beautiful by littering the grounds with cigarette butts. While most people know that exposure to tobacco smoke--both active and passive--is life-threatening, many do not realize the dangers that tobacco litter poses to the environment. Cigarette butts leach toxic chemicals, including arsenic, cadmium, lead and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into the environment, harming its ecosystems. In addition, the plastic components of cigarette butts are only biodegradable under ideal conditions, further threatening the environment.

The hearty butt pick-up participants were treated to a free lunch following the event as well as Colonels Kick Butt & Chew Too t-shirts and prizes.

Contact Information

Jack Rutherford
Jack.rutherford@eku.edu
8596221889

Published on May 06, 2015