An estimated 6 trillion cigarette butts are produced globally each year, making them the planet’s most pervasive form of plastic pollution. Dropping butts is socially accepted in majority of the world, but they cause serious damage to the environment. Most cigarette butts contain a filter made of cellulose acetate fiber, a type of plastic.
What can we do? Pick up cigarette butts as often as you can, as every filter is a potential threat to wildlife and to you, too. There are over 3.5 TRILLION cigarette butts ending up in nature each year and it is the most common litter type picked up during World Cleanup Day cleanups. You can contribute towards our big goal of collecting 1 billion of them and sending a major message to the industry and policy makers that we don't want cigarette butt pollution anymore. Just pop over to let us know how many you picked up so far.
Tip! You don't have to wait until World Cleanup Day. Make an individual cleanup a habit by carrying with you gloves and an empty garbage bag every day and pick up trash along your regular routes.
In the digital world, similar to the environment, there is a huge amount of trash. Unnecessary emails, files, apps, duplicates of photos and videos are all digital waste. This digital trash creates digital pollution that continues to consume energy even when we have forgotten it. Each year the internet and its supporting systems produce 900 million tons of CO2, which’s more than the annual output of the whole Germany.
The growing concern about the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector's energy consumption and CO2 pollution created by wasteful digital practices brought Let’s Do It World to initiate first global digital cleanup campaign in 2020. Digital Cleanup Day is held annually in third Saturday of March.
The result of the Digital Cleanup Day 2022: 2,7 million GB was deleted that resulted in at least 683 tons of CO2 that was prevented.
You can read more about digital waste and the campaign here:
Let’s Do It World is developing and implementing an Environmental Education Project in African communities and schools. Aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the program will raise awareness on environmental topics, including waste reduction and climate change. The project will bridge the gap between awareness and action through experiential learning, global solidarity and civic engagement.
SEEP provides guidance, information and tools to enable communities, teachers and students at a local level to empower children and young people to play an active role in their schools, families and communities.
This is an ambitious project to convert 1000 schools into green schools. The project is being trialled in Namibia, and expected to be introduced to 50 schools from 15 African countries in 2022.
See the SEEP webpage here: www.seep.education
Let’s Do It World’s vision is a waste-free world, and to achieve this we need to take multiple actions—not just cleaning up but also preventing waste production, as well managing the waste effectively afterwards.
Every day Latin America generates half a million tons of solid waste, of it 35 000 tons of waste go completely unmanaged. This means that the natural world goes unprotected from this great quantity of waste. This increases the vulnerability of people living in poor conditions, such as those without access to health systems, water sanitisation, and clean public spaces—leaving them exposed to danger around certain landfills.
In the Let’s Do It World Latin America region we are working on designing a transformational model of solid waste management with LDIW members from the LATAM and Caribbean network. This happens by sharing educational tools about composting and segregating waste, and establishing continual communication in virtual community spaces around the continent to share experiences and ideas around the region.
