Surfrider Kicks Butt in North Beach! At least 6,000 butts collected in 2 hours.

Surfrider’s Hold on to Your Butt volunteers joined forces with the Telegraph Hill Dwellers led by activist and filmmaker Judy Irving and North Beach residents to get cigarette butts off the streets of our beloved city. And did we ever succeed! The team met at Sylvia’s Bakeshop and in just two hours collected at least 6,000 butts. All will be recycled through TerraCycle.

To help prevent the butts from coming back, we’ve donated and installed 5 new buttcans. Countless thanks to Surfrider volunteer and North Beach resident Anna Kauffman for outreach and coordination of the cans, core volunteers Ken Pechous, Hitomi Yasuda, and Michele McEntee for installation and support, and these wonderful businesses for maintaining them! Look for the cans in these areas, and stop in to thank the business owners for their support.
Sylvia’s Bakeshop
Tope Lounge
Caffe Trieste
Cadre Custom Frame
Pete’s on Green

City-Sponsored Buttcan Pilot Begins!

It’s been more than two years since we launched the San Francisco “cheek” of the Hold on to Your Butt campaign (thank you to Surfrider San Diego for originating this powerful program way back in 1992!). We’ve been slowly building the program here in SF, thanks to tireless work from our dedicated volunteers, and mission-critical support from Sunshine Swinford of SF Environment, installing our first buttcans at SF State in 2016. Additional cans followed.

We have many goals, all focused on preventing cigarette butt litter in SF. And we’ve reached a milestone for one of them this week: SF Public Works will be maintaining 40 buttcans in the Richmond and Sunset Districts as part of a 6-month pilot program. If successful, we hope the City will expand the program, installing and maintaining cigarette receptacles (aka buttcans) in “hotspot” areas all over San Francisco.

As we discuss in our report, Preventing Cigarette Litter in San Francisco, buttcans prevent cigarette litter by giving smokers a safe place to dispose of their cigarette butts. San Francisco’s 6o cents per pack cigarette litter abatement fee should be used for this purpose, and for educating smokers about the harms of cigarette litter. Check out our Hold on to Your Butt page for more info on that.

We recycle all of the cigarette butts we collect through Terracycle, and would love for the city to recycle all of the cigarette butts they collect to help achieve its Zero Waste by 2020 goal.

We’re not the only ones recycling butts and installing cans. Community organizations all over the Bay Area are working together to prevent cigarette litter, including: Shark Stewards, Union Square Business Improvement District, Lower Polk Community Benefit District, Richmond District Neighborhood Center, Lake Merritt-Uptown BID, and more.

Surfrider and SF Environment have been out in force this week, installing buttcans and doing cigarette butt cleanups in these areas in the Sunset: Irving Street between 19th – 25th Avenues, Noriega Street between 28th – 33rd Avenues, along the Ocean Beach Promenade from Noriega to Rivera Streets. In the Richmond, we are installing them on Geary Boulevard from Arguello Street to 7th Avenue, and 18th Avenue to 22nd Avenue, and on Ocean Beach in the parking lot from JFK Drive to Stairwell 20.

Come on out for our launch event and beach cleanup on June 30. Countless thanks to Ashley Summers in Supervisor Katy Tang’s office for leading the charge on this, as well as Angelina Yu in Supervisor Sandy Fewer’s office, and Ian Schneider, Rachel Gordon, and Larry Stringer at Public Works for making this pilot happen!

What is An Ocean Friendly Restaurant?

What’s An Ocean Friendly Restaurant?

By Sarah C. Brady

This is a big week for the ocean. The U.N. will be holding its first-ever Ocean Conference, which will overlap with World Oceans Day on Thursday. San Francisco’s Surfrider chapter will hold it’s own celebration this Thursday, when it officially launches its Ocean Friendly Restaurants program with a Happy Hour that all are welcome to attend (see event info here).

Those not familiar with the Ocean Friendly Restaurant (OFR) program may wonder what dining out has to do with the coastline. One of the OFR co-leads for San Francisco, Corinne Gentile, offers up some insight.

“In 2016 Surfrider volunteers removed nearly 7,000 pounds of trash from beaches in SF. Sadly, a good part of that waste comes from takeout containers which are provided by local restaurants. People take to-go food down to the beach and, particularly at Ocean Beach, tend to leave it piled next to overflowing trash cans. Then it blows into the sand and water.”

“We focus on things like plastic straws. They’re one of the main items we find in the sand, and can end up in animals’ throats and noses. The crazy part is that straws are so unnecessary but they never biodegrade.”

In a statement released for this week’s Ocean Conference, the U.N. echoed the sentiment, reporting that 80% of the ocean’s pollution comes from activities on land. “Plastic waste alone kills up to one million sea birds, a hundred thousand sea mammals and countless fish each year.”

The OFR program will work with restaurants to help them cut back on products that plague the ocean and it’s inhabitants. Volunteers will offer pro bono consultations to any restaurant that wants to become OFR certified.

Gentile says that the program aims to make the process simple and cost-effective. “We take a look at what distributor the restaurant is using and recommend products that their distributor carries. This makes the switch easy because next time they need to place an order they can just choose different products.”

Each OFR receives a decal they can proudly display in their storefront.

Participating restaurants should expect to see a variety of benefits, including a positive financial impact. Diverting waste away from landfill to compost bins means cutting down on waste-management costs. Gentile offers the example of Pagan Idol, a local tiki bar. “They recently made the switch to compostable straws. They’re now able to dispose of the full contents of used cocktail glasses, including the fruit garnishes, directly into their compost. For them it has meant saving $675/month on their Recology bill.”

Although the launch of the OFR program is not yet official, there are four local restaurants already certified: Blue Plate, The Boardroom (which will host Thursday’s launch party), The Taco Shop @ Underdogs, and Piperade.

Want to help additional restaurants join their ranks? Check out this one page breakdown of the program, which Surfrider encourages you to share. You can also reach out to the OFR team at ofr@sf.surfrider.org.

Be sure to follow Surfrider SF’s website and social media over the coming months and watch for an interactive map of local Ocean Friendly Restaurants.

Join the #ButtBrigade! May Events and Updates

The Hold on to Your Butt #ButtBrigade has been in full force this spring! Following March’s very successful cigarette butt cleanup on Balboa Street—6,000 butts!—we installed 5 ashcans sponsored and maintained by the Richmond District Neighborhood Center (RDNC). Feedback from residents has been very positive so far, and we’ve gotten several requests to install more, which we’ll be doing with the help of the RDNC. Outer Richmond, we love you!

May 8: Committee Meeting
Want to do more than just read about our work? Come to the Monday, May 8 Hold on to Your Butt Committee meeting—6:45-8:45pm on the 5th Floor of Sports Basement Bryant Street in SOMA—to help us strategize and implement solutions to SF’s cigarette litter problem.

May 20: Outer Sunset Cigarette Butt Cleanup
Join us Saturday, May 20 from 3-5 pm at Rolling-Out’s parklet (1722 Taraval Street) for our next cigarette butt cleanup. We’ll supply the grabbers, buckets, and gloves – just bring your awesome self! More info on Facebook.

Help Us Spend Some Cash!
We’re excited to announce we’ve received a grant from Keep America Beautiful that will allow us to purchase and donate 75 ashcans to organizations that can:

• Maintain them
• Perform 3 cigarette litter scans/cleanups over a 12-month period
• Recycle the butts through TerraCycle (it’s easy to do, and free!)

We also have pocket ashtrays and car ashtrays up for donation to bars, clubs, and cigarette retailers that pledge to be butt-free businesses.

If you’re an organization or business that wants to learn more, email hotyb@sf.surfrider.org.

TerraCycle and the Union Square BID: A Cigarette Litter Reduction Success Story

San Francisco’s Union Square Business Improvement District and Block by Block piloted the installation of 10 TerraCycle cigarette butt receptacles in August 2016. Since then, they have observed a dramatic reduction in cigarette butt litter where receptacles are installed. We recently interviewed them about the program, which has been a great success.

How long does each receptacle take to fill? Approximately 1 week
How often are receptacles emptied? 2x per week, at the beginning and end of the week
How many butts does a receptacle hold? 500-700
How much cigarette waste has been recycled to date: 25 lbs of dry butts
How was waste stored? Plastic garbage bags in a large box
Why did they adopt the program? Union Square BID was struggling to abate cigarette litter. A Block by Block staff member brought the TerraCycle receptacles to their attention as a proven, effective means to reduce cigarette litter, having had success with the program in other cities across the U.S.
Have they seen any evidence that the receptacles promote smoking? No increase in smoker activity around the receptacles has been observed. They were installed in known hotspots, identified by concentrations of cigarette butts (in Union Square, these areas included nightclubs, youth hostels, and near trash cans).
Have they observed a decrease in cigarette litter where receptacles are installed? The decrease in cigarette litter has been “night and day” since receptacles were installed. Ashcans keep existing smokers from littering, and discourage others from smoking there because they don’t see the butts scattering the ground. If smokers have a convenient place to dispose of their butts, they overwhelmingly use it.
How does the BID pay for the receptacles and their maintenance? They allocate a portion of their cleaning budget for the purchase of receptacles, and contract with Block by Block to maintain them.
How have the receptacles impacted labor time and costs? Cigarette butt receptacles have significantly decreased labor time and costs. The whole process of emptying the receptacles and storing butts for recycling takes approximately 15 minutes, versus having to manually sweep and collect the butts off the ground. They still manually pick up any butts observed on the ground, and have seen a dramatic decrease in number they have to pick up.

Kicking Butt in the Richmond

Nearly every neighborhood in San Francisco faces the problem of rampant littering of cigarette butts and other trash. It’s overwhelming, and sometimes feels like it’s easier not to care. Not every neighborhood is as lucky as the Outer Richmond, with neighbors like Pawel, business owners like Yuka of Cassava, and the organizations like the amazing Richmond District Neighborhood Center, who actually do something about it. Pawel saw one of our Hold on to your Butt cigarette recycling receptacles — “buttcylers”– and thought “every neighborhood should have these.” He reached out to Yuka, also head of the Balboa Village Merchants Association who emphatically agreed.

To raise awareness about the cigarette butt littering problem — which many people don’t notice — we organized a cigarette butt cleanup. Pawel spearheaded the effort, with support from Surfrider and our friends at Public Works’ fantastic Adopt-A-Street program

In about 2 hours, 14 volunteers collected over 6,000 cigarette butts, and 8 bags of trash. We’ll be highlighting these results at the next Balboa Village Merchants Association meeting. The proof is in the butt, as they (may or may not) say, and we hope the passion and efforts of this neighborhood to have clean streets, free of toxic plastic cigarette litter, will make installation of cigarette receptacles or buttcyclers a no-brainer. The Richmond District Neighborhood Center is leading the way! They’ve adopted 5 receptacles, an amazing show of support and commitment to a cleaner, safer neighborhood.


Local bakeries Butter Love and Marla Bakery offered sweet treats for all of those who participated, and business owners thanked volunteers countless times. The cleanup was even featured in the Richmond Blog and got a shoutout from Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer’s office — not too shabby for a week or so’s worth of preparation and a couple hours of good dirty fun!

(Image credits, from top: Sandra Lee Fewer’s office, Ken Pechous, Pawel Dlugosz)

Cleaning Up the TL

We took some of the stink out of the notoriously dirty Tenderloin yesterday when just 10 volunteers picked up an overwhelming 6,650 cigarette butts on 9 TL blocks in less than 2 hours. The TL is home to the highest concentration of kids in all of SF. That the city of San Francisco doesn’t do more to keep their home clean and safe, by at the very least enforcing their requirement that businesses must have cigarette receptacles, is nothing but a dirty shame. Not surprisingly, we found the highest concentrations of cigarette butts around SROs, bars, and corner stores. Ashcans and education will help this problem.

We did good, it felt good, didn’t smell so good….but butt picking rarely does. Many many thank yous from neighborhood, a few threats, and some serious good karma for the volunteers. Big thanks to Tradition for hosting our happy hour and to Boeddeker Park for being our home base. We’ll be recycling all butts through TerraCycle.

Salesforce Volunteers Grab 7,400 Butts

On a normal day, we’d be calling HR. But we’re talking about cigarette butts, and for Salesforce #Futureforce volunteers, this was no normal day. Salesforce took a stand for the environment last week when team leaders Stephanie and Jessica brought together 15 recent grads and interns from the #Futureforce for a volunteer day with Surfrider’s Hold on to Your Butt committee to clean up cigarette butt litter, and install the first cigarette recycling station (aka ashcan) in San Francisco’s Financial District.

We met up at Salesforce’s Mission and Fremont St. offices, I subjected them to my spiel (get the facts here), geared them up with gloves, grabbers, and buckets, and they hit the streets.
There’s a first time for everything, and though I didn’t ask, I’m betting this is the first time these tech workers started their day at Salesforce not in the building, but outside, on the streets of San Francisco, on a mission to pick up cigarette butts.

The rest of us set up camp at 45 Fremont, and unfurled our new banner designed by environmentalist ad agency gyro. First comment off the street was “That’s bulls**t”– but hey, we got the guy’s attention, and who knows, maybe he was just having a bad day. Regardless, his was the only negative response of the day — other passersby stopped, read, and appreciated our message.

We proceeded to install the Surfrider ashcan, sponsored by Salesforce. I’ll be emptying it for the time being, until the City recognizes the need to install and maintain ashcans all over San Francisco. With this install, Salesforce is not only demonstrating its commitment reducing plastic toxic waste, but also upholding San Francisco law – the SF Department of Public Works (DPW) requires that every business in San Francisco must have a cigarette litter receptacle.

Stalwart Surfrider volunteer Ken wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty – or a bit bloody – in getting our ashcan strapped to its new home. Next time we bring work gloves! Ken rocked it and has been granted the possibly dubious honor of being our official SF ashcan installer.

Know a place that needs one? Send them our ashcan sponsorship info and form – or shoot me an email at hotyb@sf.surfrider.org.

Our first customer was a little bewildered by our enthusiasm for his smoking, but proved a willing participant in recycling his butt.

We had the luck of a sunny day and the volunteers were out for nearly 2 hours circling the blocks around Salesforce, and bringing home the butts – an astonishing 7,400!!

We can’t say thank you enough for their help! And neither could all the folks who thanked our volunteers as they cleaned up our beautiful, filthy, dirty city.

We’ll be recycling all of these butts through TerraCycle. First though, they’ll make an appearance at our Message in a Bottle plastic pollution art and education event this weekend – Feb 3-5. Hope to see you there!

*3/8/2017 UPDATE* We received the official count from TerraCycle, and Salesforce volunteers collected an astounding 7,400 cigarette butts! Post updated from original estimate of 5,000 butts.

Not to Flick: Cigarette Butts are Plastic—Really—And Useless—Really

Cigarette filters are made of 12,000 individual strands of a high-grade plastic called cellulose acetate. Cellulose acetate is also used to make sunglasses, textiles, good old-fashioned photographic film, personal hygiene products, and more.
Cigarette filters look like cotton, paper, or some other kind of natural fiber, because cellulose acetate is derived from cotton in a complex way I finally understand after reading Patricia dePra’s explanation.

Cellulose acetate is used instead of natural fibers such as cotton or paper because it holds up against heat and moisture—handy and practical features to have at the mouth-end of a lit cigarette—and because it’s cheaper and more uniform to manufacture than biodegradable alternatives.

Most smokers don’t litter other forms of plastic. And, people as a rule avoid deliberately contaminating their environment—most wouldn’t toss dead batteries off the dock or down a storm drain. But it’s still common practice to flick a plastic butt loaded with lead, cadmium, arsenic, nicotine, and other toxins on to the ground, where they leach these nasty contaminants into the water and soil, threatening life on land and at sea. Just one smoked cigarette butt was found to kill half the fish in one liter of water.

Why do smokers do this? I wish I could tell you. I’m a former smoker, and I did it too. I can tell you that I didn’t know that cigarette butts are plastic—and never thought about the toxins they trap. Nor did much thought or awareness go into that flick. It was just what you did when you finished your cigarette.

Some who study this will say that it’s because smokers want to distance themselves from their habit, and subconsciously that may be true, but mostly I think it’s because cig butts stink to high heaven and there’s often nowhere to safely toss them out. Not an excuse, I know. But it is a reason. Until we’re aware that our actions cause harm, we have no reason to change them.

The real rub is that cigarette filters do not reduce the harm of smoking, and may in fact increase it. They’re a marketing tactic used by tobacco companies to sell more cigarettes. Filters require smokers to draw more heavily on the cigarette when they take a puff, and smoke more cigarettes to get the same nicotine fix.

It’s maddening that the most littered item in the world is not only toxic and plastic, but completely unnecessary. Here in San Francisco, Surfrider’s Hold on to Your Butt program is working to change this by educating smokers, installing cigarette receptacles, advocating for enforcement of littering laws, and demanding that big tobacco get their plastic out of smokers’ butts. Together, we can keep this toxic trash out of our environment.

No Filter: San Francisco’s Newest Butt Blog

The Naked Truth: 8,950 butts from Ocean Beach and Baker Beach