I’m still writing, I swear. Look, here’s proof…
Pretend it’s 5 years ago and you can tell the future.
Being a psychic and all, you’re obviously wearing a turban or fez, and, rubbing a giant marble, you glance over to me, go all Nostradamus and say: “You know, Mike, in 5 year’s time you’ll be writing articles on litter and the question of climate of change.”
Then sit back. Just wait for it. 10 to 1 I’d laugh at you.
Crack up, actually. Uncontrollably. Laugh you out of your carnie psychic booth. Or maybe I’d just roll my eyes.
Even if you told me this last year I wouldn’t have bought it. It’s funny, how things happen. One day you’re looking for work, the next you land an unpaid internship (if it’s possible to “land” unpaid things), and the day after that you’re working for the company you interned for, pretending to be passionate about global warming and cigarette butts. It’s the game. Get or get got.
Here’s an article I wrote for where I work’s website. It’s about cigarette litter. Note the cheesy title and the obligatory call to action at the end. I also wrote little news-item diddies on the homepage about our move into a larger place and the craziness of the climate debate–those I titled “Movin’ On Up” and “‘Is there a Voice of Reason in the house?’,” respectively.
My goal is to add as many bad jokes and as much of my corny humor into the business as I possibly can. People like that, right? Shows a Human touch.
Anyway, the article’s attached below and the other stuff’s on Ocean’s site. I write pretty much all the tidbits on there. That’s why they call me Mr. Tids.
See? Bad jokes. Can’t be helped.
Oh, and one more thing, the “I” referred to in the piece isn’t actually me. It’s my boss.
This is me ghostwriting. It’s like regular writing, only scary.
—
“No butts about it… THIS is litter, too!”
Did you know that cigarette butts are actually NOT completely biodegradable?
I didn’t. Paper and treated tobacco, that’s all I thought cigarettes were. But their filters, it turns out, contain fibers of something called cellulose acetate, which looks like cotton but is actually a form of plastic. And like any other plastic, these fibers break down in the environment incredibly slowly. Although researchers have not yet determined an exact timeframe, various sources state that to completely degrade, these filters can take anywhere between 18 months and 10 years.
10 years! That’s 120 months! That means that some of the cigarettes you step over on the road or on the beach, the butts you find in your lawn or see floating in lakes can be a whole 3,600 days old. Wow….
What got me started on all of this was my visit to the First Annual Right Whale Festival up in Jacksonville last week. On display were gallons of see-through jugs, each one filled to the brim with soggy old cigarette butts that had recently been collected. Next to them were brochures titled “Cigarette Litter,” from Keep America Beautiful, Inc.
Inside were some facts:
“As one of the smallest pieces of [refuse], cigarette litter represents over 20% of the litter collected in many community cleanup initiatives.”
“18% of all litter dropped to the ground is washed into streams, rivers, lakes and the ocean by storm runoff.”
Beside just the aesthetic and environmental effects of cigarette litter, there’s also the financial hit. Because of their size, picking up cigarette butts is difficult manual labor, and expensive. A recent study from Longwood College, Virginia reports that their cost of cigarette litter cleanup for the year was over $50,000. Which is an upsetting amount of zeroes.
So let’s all make a New Year’s resolution, a pact. It’s not a huge one—certainly easier than dieting—but it could absolutely be life-changing. If all the smokers out there change their habits, just a little—use car and portable ash trays, ash trash receptacles, think about where they’ll discard their butts before lighting up, and stop throwing butts out the window—Ocean will follow suit. Starting in January, we’ll institute and maintain a weekly beach cleanup campaign here on Flagler’s coastline. Personally, I do casual cleanups whenever I’m on the beach, just picking up butts and litter as I happen by it. And sometimes, I come home with two trash bags full of plastic, rubber, balloon remnants and string a week.
Now just imagine the results if there were more people involved.
So what do you say? Are you with me? We can be doing something important here, help the environment, lighten the economic load, beautify our cities—and just by taking a tiny bit more personal responsibility, being the slightest bit more aware. It really is amazing how just a little effort from a lot of people can make such huge differences.
Let’s make 2010 the year when resolutions matter. And remember to write to me about your own projects to help save the planet. I’d love to hear about them and share your stories with others right here.
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 8:48 pm and is filed under essay/social crit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
