First cigarette surfboard in Canada!

Title: With 1.2 million cigarette butts recycled, Surfrider brings awareness to this crisis with their cigarette surfboard.

For immediate release, Tofino & Ucluelet and beyond, May 20, 2022: 

What’s almost as remorseful as the pollution itself is our acceptance of the pollution in the places we live, how we accept and anticipate sidewalks dotted with chewing gum and cigarette butts.

Big tobacco corporations have chemicalized and plasticized tobacco smoking. Toxins like cadmium and arsenic are added to cigarettes, containined within bleached paper and a cellulose acetate filter. The filter, made from plastic, is the most littered item on the planet, with 4.95 trillion discarded annually every year. Cigarette butts are the most prevalent type of debris collected in beach clean-ups around the world, and they are consistently the number one form of litter, by number, found on local beaches in the Pacific Rim. 

This pollutant has unwittingly ended up in too many undeserving sinks: among swirls of waves, seabirds, marine species, pets, even humans, as cigarette butts find their way into food sources.  Cigarette butts are poisonous when ingested by children and other living organisms, as evidenced by poison control centre data, veterinary literature, and national reports. To bring awareness to this mass pollutant and this growing issue, we decided to contain this material in a new way: in a surfboard. The sport of surfing is reliant on healthy oceans; it depends on breaks keeping their integrity, which is continually threatened by rising sea levels, water pollution, plastic pollution and development. Surfboards are the emblem and facilitator of the ocean sport, which makes the cigarette surfboard aka ‘Dart Board’ the perfect platform for displaying the message about the impacts cigarettes have on the marine environment.

Surfrider Pacific Rim has been running the Hold On To Your Butt Campaign since 2017, working with the public and private sector to collect and recycle butts in Tofino and Ucluelet. Since 2017, 1.2 million cigarette butts have been recycled through Terracycle, who recycle this material into plastic lumber and pallets. 

This Surfrider cigarette board gained inspiration from the first and official Cigarette Surfboard, bringing this to life locally with Jesse Jones owner of Someseaco, a surfboard shaper from Ucluelet. This environmental collaboration also wove in the talents of Ucluelet based filmmaker, Mike Dandurand. Mike captured the whole life cycle of the cigarette butt surfboard project: from the fashioning of the board to the final stage: Three local surfers rode the 7’ Twin Fish board at Long Beach in March 2022, making history, as the first board made from cigarette butts to grace the waters of the Pacific Rim - without any butts making their way into the undeserving waters. 

Any project poses challenges, making a surfboard out of cigarette butts is certainly not exempt of this. Why go to all the bother? Well, at this point, we can’t afford not to: the plastic and chemical pollution caused by butts that are discarded into natural spaces is contributing to our escalating environmental crisis. Even in landfills, these items will never degrade. Furthermore, while the connection between climate change and cigarette butts may not be clear between the heat and the smoke, they are still inextricably linked. The extraction of raw materials for cigarette butts, the manufacturing of cigarette butts, and their transportation all release greenhouse gas emissions. Every tonne of plastic produced releases 1.89 tonnes of greenhouse gases, and with 5.6 trillion cigarettes manufactured worldwide, there is a significant amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere. To add literal fuel to the fire, during increasingly drier seasons, cigarette butts contribute to forest fires, destroying vital carbon sinks and habitats. 

Surfrider is calling for a federal ban on cellulose acetate cigarette butt filters, which harm  waterways as well as erode overall climate and environmental health. Until the 1950s, there were no plastic filters, these were added as part of a marketing scheme to increase the idea of smoking being safe. Originally made of biodegradable materials, butts could break down within a short time frame - there is absolutely no reason we can’t return to this. In addition, we’re advocating for extended producer responsibility to be expanded to tobacco corporations to make them responsible for the mass collection, recycling and cleanup of cigarette butts and all packaging. 

The time has come and gone where we can treat the ocean like our massive ashtray, whether it’s cigarette butts, or any other form of plastic product or packaging.

Media contacts:

Laurie Hannah

Chapter Coordinator

chaptercoordinator@pacificrim.surfrider.org

604-698-6386

130 second video on YouTube - https://youtu.be/hPNP9qk9g_E

30 second clip here is the dropbox link to the dartboard video - https://www.dropbox.com/s/8p5pdpyhrcgqcd5/Dart%20Board%20Surf%20Nationals%2030sec.mp4?dl=0

About Surfrider Pacific Rim:

Surfrider Pacific Rim is dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s ocean, waves, and beaches, for all people, through a powerful activist network. Living seaside or landlocked, regenerating this blue planet is essential for all of humanity to thrive. Surfrider’s focus is divided into 3 pillars: eliminating single-use plastics, finding the end-of-life solutions for hard to recycle petroleum products, as well as engaging youth, individuals, businesses, local First Nations, and government in their Ocean Friendly initiatives. Through their “beach to boardroom” systems approach, they address the root of the plastics pollution crisis with the vision of achieving clean water and healthy beaches. Through this approach, Surfrider has removed over 50 metric tonnes of marine debris from the West Coast, supported the implementation of plastic bans, and achieved numerous coastal victories.