Vancouver resident Yasmin Schepens likes turning popular songs into catchy advocacy anthems, urging people to safely dispose of their cigarette butts and protect the environment.
“That was also my main thing … to catch people’s attention with humour instead of sort of shocking them with all this information,” she told CBC News.
Schepens, founder of the Buttwatch campaign — which highlights the environmental impact of cigarette butts — has turned the Ghostbusters theme song into a trailer for her own ‘buttwatchers’ campaign. Now, she’s working on a new parody tune, Butt It, inspired by Michael Jackson’s Beat It.
“You better throw that butt in the bin, or I’ll show you some discipline,” she belts out in a verse from Butt It. “The fire in your butt might light the whole woods, so butt it, just butt it.”
With more than 150 wildfires raging in the province after a week of extreme heat and lightning strikes, the Buttwatch campaigner emphasizes the urgent need to raise awareness about how easily discarded cigarette butts can ignite a blaze.
Just last week, Richmond RCMP put out a brush fire near the CF Richmond Centre mall, which they believe was caused by a discarded cigarette butt. They are urging people to be vigilant and take extra precautions to prevent fires.
“This incident highlights the importance of properly handling ignited articles such as cigarette butts,” said Insp. Mike Roberts, an operations officer with the Richmond RCMP.
WATCH | Vancouver smokers explain how they properly dispose of their butts:
Cigarette butts are the most littered item in Vancouver, the city says. A key way to stopping that is through peer pressure, says Patrick Chauo, a solid waste engineer with the city.
“With the current dry weather, even a small spark can lead to a potentially dangerous situation.”
In B.C., the majority of wildfires each year are caused by lightning, according to the provincial government. Human activities including carelessness, such as flicking a cigarette butt out the car window or not fully putting out a campfire, make up the remainder.
Butts and fires
B.C. Wildfire service blamed smoking or smoking materials for the 2017’s Elephant Hills wildfire near Ashcroft, about 340 kilometres northeast of Vancouver. The fire, which lasted about 75 days, burned more than 191,000 hectares of forest, destroyed more than 100 homes and caused more than $1 billion worth of damage.
Lit cigarettes are among the biggest causes of fires in Vancouver parks, according to the city’s park board.
And there are lots of cigarette butts around. The City of Vancouver, which consulted University of Waterloo research, estimated more than 400,000 butts from residents alone end up as litter in the city everyday.
Discarding cigarette butts on the ground is subject to a littering fine of between $250 and $10,000 under a street and traffic bylaw. However, not many fines were issued between 2020 to 2023.
In an attempt to cut down on the problem of discarded butts, the city has on-the-go cigarette butt containers, called pocket ashtrays, available for free at most community centres and police stations.
While Schepens agrees the pocket ashtrays are a great way to avoid cigarette butts from ending up in park grounds and beaches, she said the city should do more.
“It would help if the parks had some sort of a garbage bin just for cigarette butts only because some people do not want to throw the cigarette butts in the garbage bin because they think it might set a fire.”
The campaigner also wants people to start collecting cigarette butts like she does and noted butts can be recycled.
According to Buttwatch’s website, butts can be shipped to a company called Terracycle to be recycled.