The Cigarette Cleanup Project
Save your butts. Save the Earth.
I was at one of my favorite music festivals over the weekend—Summer Camp Music Fest in Central Illinois. While the vibes were high and most everyone I talked to was kind and good-hearted, I was blown away by how much trash I saw after every set! How can a community that preaches respect, authenticity, and environmental sustainability be so laissez-faire with its waste?? After many show, I stayed after and picked up a few pieces of litter to make it easier on the staff/volunteers.
By far the most common piece of litter I saw was cigarette butts. Am I saying that cigarette smokers tend to be brash and not clean up after their mess? Well… no. But, I’m not not saying that.
While this was disheartening, it did get me thinking of a video I saw recently. Peter McCoy, one of the foremost most successful “citizen scientists" in the mycology world, trained oyster mushrooms to use mushroom filters as a substrate for growing and sprouting their fruits. This blew my mind when I saw it, even though I knew oysters would pretty much eat through any substrate, and I started telling everyone at the fest about it.
Eventually, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment. Hey, there’s all these free cigarettes lying around that nobody wants to use. It’s not like these are recycled materials either; they are likely sitting in a landfill somewhere adding to the growing human pollution problem that is contributing to the death of our planet.
And hey, people like to eat oyster mushrooms! So what’s to stop me from volunteering at music festivals, sporting events, outdoor street fests, etc. and picking up all the cig butts I can find, and then growing and selling the fruits of my labor?
The answer is nothing. And if I can get some free festival tickets in the meantime, all the better.
So that brings me to today. I’ve spent the day submitting volunteer applications for every festival that interests me and is feasible logistically. I am going to walk around to all the campsites giving people bags for collecting their butts in a centralized location, and then going back around and collecting them at the end of the event. I had loads of fun doing this at Scamp, and I’d imagine it’s a great opportunity to network and get the word out about my little project.
