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Cigarettes scattered on the beach among other trash.

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTT

The Hold On To Your Butt (HOTYB) program aims to raise awareness about the environmental impact of cigarette butt litter on our oceans, waves and beaches, and to help eliminate cigarette butt litter in Sonoma County.

Hold On To Your Butt

Our program is heavily focused on the installation of ashcans, recycling of cigarette butts, and collection of cigarette waste at beach clean-ups. Cigarette butts are the most prevalent litter picked up during our beach clean-ups. We have always picked up butts, and we officially started using the ashcans in 2024.  If you’re interested in volunteering in our HOTYB program please shoot an email to volunteercoordinator@sonomacoast.surfrider.org or call Arline (707) 235-9403 to get involved today!

This year we won the Coastal Champions award for our Hold On To Your Butts program. 

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Environmental Impacts

  • An estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are disposed of in our environment annually worldwide
  • Cigarette butts leach toxins when wet, posing a threat to marine and wildlife.
  • Litter clean up costs the U.S. over 11 billion annually, cigarette butts represent an estimated 32% of that litter.
  • Cigarette butts are composed of cellulose acetate, a non-biodegradable plastic, which can take up to 25 years to decompose.
  • Littered cigarette butts pose a significant fire threat.

Our chapter has 7 active ashcans helping to protect our Sonoma Coast beaches.

How can you help?

Community ashcans reduce cigarette butt litter and improve the quality of business districts for residents and visitors.  The ashcans are affixed above the ground in high foot-traffic locations. All cigarette butts collected in the ashcans are recycled.

 

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Recycling

In the future we are planning to send all of the cigarette butts that are collected in our ashcans and at our beach clean ups to be recycled. We will ship our cigarette waste to the recycler where the butts can be melted into hard plastic and molded to make new recycled industrial products like the bench pictured to the left.

 

SURFRIDER-SPONSORED ASH CANS 
THANK YOU!

HUGE thanks to the to our chapter volunteers and donors for giving to help us purchase the ash cans and keep toxic cigarette butt litter off of our streets, out of our storm drains, and ultimately out of our ocean. 

 

Thank you to our Hold On To Your Butt Ashcan location points:

Captain Davey's Expresso and Ice Cream (1 Canister)
537 Smith Brothers Rd in Bodega Bay
 
North Salmon Creek Beach (2 Canisters)
3095 Highway 1 in Bodega Bay
 
Goat Rock Beach (2 Canisters)
Goat Rock Rd in Jenner
 
Bill's Farm Basket (1 Canister)
10315 Bodega Highway in Sebastopol
 
Wright's Beach (1 Canister)
7095 Highway 1 in Bodega Bay