The Town of Cobourg, in collaboration with A Greener Future, is inviting community volunteers to help clean up cigarette litter along the Cobourg Waterfront and Victoria Park on Saturday, September 19, 2026, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Volunteers will meet at 11 a.m. at the Marina office, 103 Third Street, where supplies — gloves, buckets and garbage grabbers — will be available for pick-up. Volunteers are also welcome to bring their own grabbers and buckets.
Registration is available on the September UNSMOKE Butt Blitz webpage: https://www.agreenerfuture.ca/events-list/cobourg-marina-butt-blitz-september-2026.
All material collected will be recycled through the TerraCycle UNSMOKE cigarette recycling program. The TerraCycle program recycles these otherwise unrecyclable products into usable items.
Why Cigarette Butts Matter
Cigarette butts are the most-littered item in the world. About two-thirds of the six trillion cigarettes smoked each year end up in the environment.
Although the white filters look like cotton, they are made of cellulose acetate, a plastic that breaks apart into microplastic fibres and does not decompose naturally. Depending on where they are discarded, cigarette butts take roughly 18 months to 10 years to break down.
When butts end up in water, they release nicotine, arsenic, tar and heavy metals. A single littered cigarette butt can contaminate up to 1,000 litres of water.
Unfortunately, due to their small size, cigarette butts are often missed by the street sweeper and during public cleanup events; many end up buried in sand, leaves, or wedged in cracks in the pavement.
One Million Butts, One Community Bench
A Greener Future has set a goal of collecting 1,000,000 cigarette butts — the amount needed to turn cigarette litter into something permanent and positive. The collected material will be used to create a community bench to be installed somewhere in Ontario, with volunteers helping decide where it goes.
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
