Lebanon — Civic groups, students, businesses and local government have been enthusiastic in supporting the Lebanon Rotary Club’s project to sweep litter from the city’s streets.
“This is not just a Rotary program,” Jerry Erskine told members of the Boone County Healthy Coalition Wednesday. “It’s our initiative, but there’s no way we can do it by ourselves.”
During a visit to Norway for a Rotary International convention, Erskine was impressed by the absence of litter on the streets. That inspired him to suggest the Lebanon Rotary Club begin a three-year program to combat litter and boost Lebanon’s image with Lebanon: The Cleanest City in Indiana project.
While the project is using cigarette butts as an example of the tons of litter that is swept into Lebanon’s storm sewers and disfigures the city’s appearance, it is not an anti-smoking campaign, Erskine said.
“If there are smokers who want to smoke, that’s fine,” Erskine said. “I don’t encourage it; this is an anti-litter effort.”
Nationwide, though, an estimated two billion pounds of cigarette butts are flicked aside annually. Matt Skenazy, writing in the July-August 2011 issue of Miller-McCune magazine, said that represents 7.5 trillion individual butts — and that recycling butts is problematic because cigarette filters trap arsenic, cadmium, acetone, mercury and lead, among other toxic chemicals. San Francisco, Skenazy wrote, spends about $7.5 million a year picking up butts, and pays for that with a 2009 tax of 20 cents per pack.
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