Butt Picking in the Rain

by | May 7, 2017 | Events

Butt Blitz 2017 3

#ButtBlitz2017

This Saturday was my 3rd Annual Butt Blitz Event that I volunteered at.  Some friends of mine have Boston Terriers, and they are rescue dogs.  I have joined them as a volunteer at Boston Terrier Rescue Canada (BTRC) to help with fundraising for the group.  This group has no building as an official shelter.  They run their non-profit organization completely from the generosity of their members, from donations, and from fundraising events like this one.

A Greener Future  sponsors this event and others like it.  BTRC enters this and other contests to raise money for the rescue, but also to help the environment.  It’s a win-win for everyone.

The Butt Blitz 2017  page has pics from past events (I forgot that I was in a pic there from last year!) Last year it was a sunny, beautiful day.  This year, it was raining; so not as many people dropped in for the event this year.

TerraCycle works with A Greener Future to encourage people to recycle various products and clean up the planet.  If you want to know what happens to the cigarette butts after we send them to Terra Cycle, check out this link: Cigarette Waste Recycling Program

Some people take the time to count the butts they put in their used containers or sandwich bags.  This is fantastic!  What about the other bags, the ones without the number of butts written on the bag for us to add up?  Well, we have a formula for that!

Conversion from OZ to # of Butts

How we calculate the number of Butts from the weight of the bags

We weigh the bags and convert the weight to ounces.  1lb=16oz.  so for example, 1lb, 4.2oz is 16+4.2 = 20.2 ounces.  I then needed to calculate the reference weight for 1 cigarette butt.  I weighed 6 bags of butts.  3 pairs of the same butt count on them.  I then averaged out the results, and the result was that one butt weighs approximately:   0.01095 oz.  From that number, I was able to plug in the weights of the bags and come up with a grand total of 45,530 butts sent off to be recycled yesterday.  That’s a lot of butt picking and collecting.

Thanks to UNB Fredericton for hosting the event again this year!  The Student Union Building was our base of operations for the event, and I was happy to have a dry location away from all that rain to run the numbers and calculate the grand total number of butts we sent off to be recycled.