Ixelles is collecting cigarettes butts on April 21

Saturday the 21st of April will see volunteers in Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Namur and Oostende, picking up discarded cigarettes from the streets in a cleanup effort to improve the local environment.

This event aims to encourage smokers to be conscious of where they throw their finished cigarettes – to chose the trash can over the street floor. Pocket ashtrays are given out in each city to smokers to encourage this sentiment.

At the end of the collection, huge graduated tubes are placed at the centres of each city which will allow the calculations of the number of cigarette butts picked up. This year’s goal will be to collect 300,000 cigarette butts throughout the five cities.

Last year’s event in Brussels’ city centre, 203 volunteers collected 120 000 cigarette butts in a few hours.