Ottawa's cigarette butt waste program needs work, BIA says

The city program charged withcleaningup hundreds of thousands of cigarette butts tossed onto Ottawastreets every year is cumbersome and ineffective, according to the Bank Street BIA.

And acitycouncillor agrees, sayingit's likely time for a change.

In spite of the factthere are fewer smokers these days and that agrowing number of themare smoking paperless e-cigarettesthe waste from traditional cigarette buttsisstaggering.

Of the 2.6 million butts generated daily in Ottawa, city staff estimate about780,000 of them end up littered on the ground every day.

"It's hard to believe, but stand outside a TimHortons, or an officebuilding,or in a parking lot, and count the piles of 10 to500 [butts] that you'll see there," says Coun. DavidChernushenko.

(The story continues below)

City's cigarette bins needwork, BIA says

In 2014 the city bought 100 cigarette waste binsand gave them to Ottawa's18different business improvement areas, but some of the binsremain in storage and only five of the 18BIAs are actually using them:Sparks Street Mall,Westboro Village,Somerset Chinatown,Vanier (Quarter Vanier) andPreston Street.

Christine Leadman, the Bank StreetBIA'sexecutive director, says the city's cigarette bin programhas too many problems and restrictions.

The city's butt bins have to be fastened to the face of businessesand haven't beenpopular with manystore owners,Leadman says.

Andbecause city bylaws require peopleto smoke ninemetres away frombus stops, cigarettebinstypically have to be placedninemetres away as well meaning there's nowhere for butts to gofor the many peoplewho disobey the bylaw.

"People aren't going to walk ninemetres to throw away their cigarette when they're standing in front of the bus stop," Leadman says.

"It's really challenging when you look at all the restrictions that exist when it comes to smoking. Sohow do you put something in place to accommodate the butts?"

The BIAoptedto useCigBins instead of the city's bins. It'saservice launched in 2014 byUniversity of Ottawa students who manage the weekly pick-up of cigarette butts from their own curbsidereceptacles. Butts collected in the 12 Bank StreetCigBinsare then sold as bulkplasticto manufacturers who recycle them into shippingcrates and plasticcartons.

'We had to go further'

In February, Chernushenko himselfa non-smokersought anexplanation from staff about howcigarette butt waste is managed across the city, and he points out thatOttawa's 18 BIAs only manage a small fraction of Ottawa's streets.

"So far, the city has left [cigarette butt management]in the hands of the BIA. That's fine to a point, but only to a point,"he says."And then, not allBIAshave made this a priority. It seemed to me we had to go further."

This is not a BIA issue. This is a city issue.- Christine Leadman, executive director of the Bank Street BIA

Leadman agrees.

"This is not a BIA issue. This is a city issue," she says.

Chernushenkosays he'sconsidering directingcity staff to suggest betterreceptacles tohandle the littering.

The problem, he says,isn'tjust that eachbutt takes an estimated15 years to break downit's that butts typically containfilters made from cellulose acetate fibers that getloaded with toxins once thecigarettes havebeen smoked through them.

Nicotine, for example, is a powerful insecticide, and small quantities of itgettrapped infilters. Astudy in Virginiadetermined the other compounds in discarded cigarette butts, includingremnant tobacco,becomebiohazards to certain water fleas at the lower end of the aquatic food chain.

Chernushenko compares the effect of rain washing throughthousands of discarded butts andinto sewers totheenvironmental risk presented by antiobioticsthat accumulate in water systems.

"It all comes around to us in the end. Sowhatever we can do to keep chemicals out of our bodies and out of the ecosystem that don't belong there, we should be looking at," Chernushenko says.

Listen to an Ottawa Morning interview with Leadman here.