8,200 butts. This is what the 1.8 kilos of used cigarettes collected by a dozen members of the Nice Plogging collective represent, this Wednesday August 24, 2022.
An action that resonates with the work of the artist Toolate: last week, he installed a huge pack of cigarettes filled with buttson the Promenade des Anglais, to denounce the incivility of passers-by.
“We pick them up in packs of ten”
Flora very quickly fills her plastic bottle, which has been converted into a giant ashtray. She is participating for the first time:It’s going very fast. In some areas, they are picked up in packs of ten.“Especially right next to the benches.”It would almost be necessary to put signs next to eachexclaims Maria, a volunteer for a year.
The latter does not only collect the waste. She also appeals to passers-by. As soon as Maria spots a smoker, she rushes him offer a pocket ashtray. “It’s a good idea I think“, says Riyad. This 22-year-old admits to throwing his cigarette on the ground when he does not have an ashtray at hand:
It’s a reflex to throw away my cigarette butt.
For this order picker, the simplest solution is still to quit smoking.
“There are people who don’t know that a cigarette butt pollutes”
A volunteer for almost three years in the collective, Josette is no longer surprised by this kind of response. “There are people who don’t know that a cigarette butt pollutes. So when we talk to them about it, we hope it makes its way.”
The people lying on the beach are taken aback just by seeing the ten volunteers bustling about, their noses in the pebbles. This is the whole mission of Nice Plogging. “Once a father who was on the beach with his children saw me picking up trashsays Dino, a young recruit of the collective. He came to help me for ten meters, he picked up everything he could. It was amazing. And he told me that before that, he didn’t see all this rubbish.“
And to be seen even better: the artist Toolate donated his work to the collective.