Surfrider Club helps to implement cigarette disposals

In order to promote the proper disposal of cigarette butts Samo’s Heal The Bay Surfrider Club will create a visual presentation to the city of Santa Monica and the Los Angeles County Science Fair for the implementation of ash cans, similar to those in Huntington Beach and San Diego.The club’s ash cans would sit in public locations According to Club President Sadie Eller (‘14), Heal the Bay is conducting the study to raise awareness within the Santa Monica Community about the extreme cigarette pollution occurring in the streets and beaches.“[Heal The Bay is] going to several sites throughout Santa Monica where we will be conducting a field experiment,” Eller said. “[The project] will involve counting and collecting the number of cigarette butts on the ground: a meter both into the street and into the sidewalk.”The study is a follow-up to an investigation carried out by “Splash Into Science,” a program led by Kay for students who study abroad, which enumerated the amount of cigarette butts found in residential areas, as well as on the beach using a surface area abundance estimate.“[The ‘Splash Into Science’] study didn’t examine urban areas, so our most recent proposal was to conduct a similar study in a lot more detail that would find cigarette-butt hotspots, or specific areas with a lot of cigarettes,” Kay said.According to Heal The Bay Club Co-President Nora Masler (‘14), Heal The Bay’s presentation will hopefully lead to funding for the ash cans from the LA County Science fair and the local government of  Santa Monica.“[Heal The Bay] would love to be recognized by the science fair,” Masler said. “[However], recognition from the local government is more important to us. We’re hoping that eventually they’ll place the cigarette receptors throughout Santa Monica which will lower cigarette pollution around the city, and in the bay.”Heal the Bay club adviser Benjamin Kay believes the ash cans will not disrupt Santa Monica’s anti-public smoking movement, but will encourage smokers to dispose of their cigarettes properly.“I don’t think [the ash cans] are going to make people think that smoking is a socially acceptable practice, because people in Santa Monica are pretty anti-smoking to begin with,” Kay said. “Having receptacles will hopefully make smokers aware that they’ve been polluting, and that they now have a chance to dispose of their cigarettes correctly.”osherman@thesamohi.com