4. Cigarette Butts Free Beaches

4. Cigarette Butts Free Beaches

Beach littering is an ever-growing concern for everyone especially for children who consider beaches as safe playgrounds. Through an online presentation, children participated in a short quiz related to waste pollution. The main concern was cigarette butt litter which is a major issue at our beaches. We looked at different local and international campaigns aimed at raising awareness against beach waste pollution. Volunteers from ‘’Saving Our Blue’’ which is a campaign launched by the Ministry for the Environment, Climate Change and Planning (MECP), collected 13kg of cigarette butts, and 3.8kg of microplastics. The campaigns’ goal was to educate and encourage the public to stop littering, reduce waste and opt to use alternative products rather than single-use plastics. Despite this effort, the participants explained how they still ended up removing cigarette butts every time they built sand castles.