One man is on a mission to keep filthy little cigarette butts from littering our community.
Local organizer of the annual Butt Blitz, Jack Elliman has so much more in the works. While the recent Vernon event cleaned 204,301 butts up (including those from a Butt Bin at The Bulldog at SilverStar), he has some grand plans to grow that number substantially.
See: Blitz to pick up cigarette butts
“Many of those butts were from the butt bin outside the Bulldog SilverStar where people have been emptying their pocket ashtrays into it all winter,” said Elliman, founder of the Pocket Ashtray — a re-usable pouch for smokers to discard their butts in. “It’s the same system that I want to initiate in Vernon, Lumby and all other surrounding municipalities.”
The Lumby local has the Village in his sites first. Elliman is planning on getting Lumby on board with a Butt Bin on public land or a local business where people can empty their butts into.
He even has a special product being made for his hometown.
“Two thousand pocket ashtrays are being assembled right meow,” said the jovial Elliman.
As for the fourth annual Butt Blitz, the success shows there will be a fifth.
“We had 17 people over the course of the day come out and help clean up the community,” said Elliman.
Few volunteers came out at first, but Elliman said some young people “chillaxin’ in the park,” and a couple of the Polson Avengers pitched in.
“They were all down to help,” said Elliman.
Even a homeless woman joined in the clean-up effort.
“She was really cool actually, genuinely wanted to help. I gave them all gloves and stuff, and I gave them all some prizes for helping.”
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