Not surprisingly, we didn’t have a big crowd for this not-very-attractive test that Anna B and I came up with. We ran a little competition, with the help of Louise from Becketts Coffee Shop who donated a prize of tea & cake for 2, to see if we could highlight where the worst areas were for cigarette butts. We have had a targeted donation from a lovely lady of £300 towards some butt bins around the town (but we need to get agreement for them to be emptied regularly, or volunteers organised…that is another issue) but first we need to know where they will be best situated.
It’s not often we can name all the people who came along but that is how low the numbers were today, so thanks very much to Tony, Sally, Ricard (from the Lions), Anna Bo(co-conspirator), Anna Br and her two children, and me – so just between the 8 of us we managed a staggering amount. Here are the results:
| Area | Number of butts |
| Church Street | 229 |
| Outside the Marine, pavement and gutter | 206 |
| The Triangle (whole area) | 184 |
| The pathway down by the river, near the Ham | 122 |
| York Street | 59 |
| Market Square (around back of loos, down towards Dukes | 51 |
| Around the Ham toilets | 43 |
| Car Parks – various | 42 |
| Around the Volunteer pub | 40 |
| Around the disabled parking spaces opp Belmont | 40 |
| Kings Lane | 39 |
| Seafront opposite Dukes, under benches, near drains | 37 |
| Sensory Gardens (Ham) | 35 |
| Around the parish church | 35 |
| Blackmore Gardens | 26 |
| Corner of Chapel Street | 25 |
| Directly outside Dukes, gutter | 25 |
| Dove Lane, near scaffolding | 22 |
| By cash point | 16 |
| Outside Estate Agents – various | 15 |
| East Street | 15 |
| Corner of Winchesters/Russell Street | 10 |
| Outside betting shop | 9 |
| Outside Costa Coffee | 8 |
| Outside disused shop | 8 |
| Outside Radway Inn | 8 |
| Outside Co-Op | 8 |
| Total | 1355 |
So if we’d had more people, we confidently think we’d have had a lot more as there are plenty of other grot spots we didn’t reach!
Now to work out where we need bins, once the Big Belly ones are replaced we may not need so many there – my thoughts are that we should have fire resistant buckets, get the kids from Sidmouth Primary to paint them (Coco?), and fill them with sand and have them all along the seafront, Church Street, ask the pubs to ALL have covered ash trays, ask Stagecoach to provide bins at their bus stops around the Triangle, plus we could put a couple of jazzy buckets in the triangle by the benches, and have lots of signs up throughout the town (backs of toilet doors? on bins?) with the information about the issues around cigarette ends – such as detailed in this report https://globalnews.ca/news/4418956/cigarette-butts-ocean-pollution-ban/ as I’m sure many smokers just aren’t aware of the problems caused by them dropping their butts.
Dx