Campaign giving away bucks for butts sees massive turn out

CHEK
hundreds of people lined up to get bucks for their butts

A campaign urging people to pick up cigarette butts off the streets brought in hundreds of people coming from all over the island in hopes to make a bit of cash for their butts.

Cigarette butts line the streets, often overlooked but Michael Wegner a local island man is working to change all that.

After bringing his cans to a bottle depot one day, he thought to himself, why not do the same with cigarette butts?

On Saturday, August 3 that idea became a reality with a campaign called Jam One In The Can.

Wegner was giving away five-cents a butt and was able to raise 1000-dollars to give away.

The limit was capped at 50-dollars a person and the money went fast with people lining up as early as midnight the night before.

For the group or person that was able to collect the most butts, a 500-dollar cash prize was given out.

One lucky group was the winner, seven people who teamed up and collected over 80-thousand butts.

Wegner also started a petition which racked up over 100-signatures hoping to ban non-compostable cigarette filters and to apply for a five-cent refundable deposit fee in hopes to make this permanent so people can return their butts any day of the year.

“It exceeded all my expectations,” Wegner said.

Over 250-thousand butts were collected at today’s event, Wegner saying people were showing up hours after the event was over and he hopes to keep it going and expanding in coming years.

 

 

Andrea FerrariAndrea Ferrari

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