Local Restaurants Help WCC to Beat Cigarette Butt Litter

What is this project about?

How can your butt win you a delicious meal at each of three top Hermanus restaurants? Simply by voting with a butt. There will be a prize of a meal voucher from each of the restaurants to the value of R500 each month for the next 3 months. That’s nine R500 vouchers in all! Instructions on how to enter for the competition are below.

The three waterfront restaurants – La Pentola, LB Seafood Bistro on the Bay and Burgundy – are determined to beat butt litter. They have sponsored the installation of 20 butt bins designed and manufactured by Whale Coast Conservation.

The restaurants will encourage their own patrons to bin their butts, but we also need to target the many locals and tourists who enjoy our world-famous waterfront.

The sponsored butt bins will be a feature outside the restaurants and along the cliff-top path.

Whale Coast Conservation (WCC) has been collecting and analysing litter since 2009. Cigarette butts are by far the most common waste item. WCC estimated that in 2015 about 25 million butts were dropped in the 600 m2 Hermanus Central Business District alone. Recent surveys indicate that butts are also a major problem at parking areas and benches along the Cliff Path.

Cigarette butts are an eyesore and a poor reflection on our “cleanest town”. One visitor called Hermanus the ‘cigarette butt capital of the world”. Butts also pose more serious problems. Cigarette filters do not biodegrade. They are in fact toxic waste and therefore an environmental health threat. The toxic chemicals trapped in the filters leach out into water, aggregate in the bodies of marine and freshwater animals and accumulate along food chains. Eventually they reach us.

How can you help? If you are a smoker, please bin your butts appropriately – not on the ground, or in a flower box or down a drain.
Whale Coast Conservation will install 20 additional butt bins sponsored by the National Lotteries Commission around the Hermanus CBD. Please use these bins for butts.

Members of the public are invited to attend the launch of the butt bin voting on Friday 26 May at 11h00.

Be sure to cast your vote – to #RespectAndProtectOurPlanet and to keep Hermanus toxin-free!

How to win the R500 meal voucher while voting with your butt.

Find the butt voting station near the Tourism Kiosk above the Old Harbour in Hermanus
There will be an issue requiring your butt vote printed on the voting station
Decide how you want to vote and deposit your butt as indicated, but remember to …
Take a selfie of you casting your vote (or ask someone else to use your camera)
Upload your picture to Instagram with the tag #RespectAndProtectOurPlanet
If you are not a smoker, you can collect other people’s butts to vote to win
Three prizes will go to the most amusing or innovative selfies each month until the end of August 2017. The winner will be announced at the end of each month on Instagram using the same hashtag
Selection of the winning entry will be entirely at the discretion of WCC. No correspondence will be entered into. The ultimate winner is the environment and everyone who lives in it

OPTION 1

VOTES

OPTION 2

VOTES

Restaurateurs with WCC staff at voting station: (Back) Paul Buckingham (LB Seafood Bistro). Rob Fryer (WCC, who designed and manufactures the bins), Shef Shane Sauvage (La Pentola) and (front) Rudolf van der Berg (Burgundy) with Sheraine van Wyk (WCC Education Manager)

Restaurateurs with butt bins and WCC staff: FLTR Shef Shane Sauvage (La Pentola). Paul Buckingham (LB Seafood Bistro on the Bay), Sheraine van Wyk (WCC environmental projects manager), Rob Fryer (WCC General Manager) and (front) Rudolf van der Berg (Burgundy)