Shifting Baselines Blog

Butts on the Beach: Coastal Clean-up yields 1.6 million of them

The International Coastal Clean-up day last September, organized by The Ocean Conservancy (the founding partner of Shifting Baselines), drew on the efforts of nearly a half million people around the world to collect 8 million pounds of trash.

And the number one item ... cigarette butts. Over 1.6 million of them. Which is why Surfrider is getting ready to make a big push on their "Hold on to your Butts," campaign (when one of their guys sent me an e-mail about this last fall with "Hold on to your Butts" in the subject line I thought it was porn spam and almost deleted it). Some local L.A. beaches are talking about banning smoking just to get people to quit using the beach as their ash tray.