Every year the local shop, Kailua Sailboards and Kayaks, hosts a beach clean up. If you fill a bag with collected trash, they’ll give you a coupon for two hours of free kayak rental. We did this episode originally in 2006, and I still really like it, despite the somewhat discouraging reason for being at the beach. OTOH, we have some great music from JRoQ, and I love Shane’s editing too.
So come on down to Kailua Beach this Sunday, help us clean up and get a free coupon for 2 hours on our beautiful bay!
Buy JRoQ’s CD at Bare Feet Shop
Visit JRoQ on MySpace
Hawaiian word:
ʻOpala: trash
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Shane no ka ‘oi (you da best man)
leave no trace is my motto
The ultimate spent cigarette butt container is the cigarette package the cigarettes come in.
If you smoke outdoors, take the cigarette out of the pack. Smoke it. Then put the spent cigarette butt back in its package. There’s plenty of room. Then when all the cigarettes are gone, throw the package full of spent butts away in a trashcan.
Make sense folks? Then do it, so are pal Rox doesn’t have to waste her time picking up your trash.
@glynda I agree. How was your hawaii vacation??
@iSandra hard not to leave a few footprints in the sand, he he, otherwise I agree with you too!
@Buddy GREAT idea although I suspect people are not too keen on putting the used ones next to the new ones – generally not a great idea in other applications.
I’ve never smoked. I just don’t get it. I understand the chemical, mental, and emotional addiction once they have started. But I don’t get why anyone would start in the first place knowing what we know about cancer these days.
Those that do smoke, don’t seem to know/understand/care that what they do has an affect on others. When they’re driving down the street, smoking in their cars, their smoke billows out and gets in my car. You wanna smoke in your house? Fine. But don’t smoke in public where it affects me and my enjoyment of being out.
And I guess smokers believe the Cig Butt Fairy flitters around behind them and picks up all the butts they toss on the ground???
Sorry for the rant. But cigarettes and cigarette smoke are one of the very few things I have 0 tolerance for in this wonderful world. Especially here in Paradise.
While I am not here to debate Shane’s views on personal freedoms, I find those comments unneccessary and irrelevant to the discussion of keeping our environment clean. Buddy, while that is a great idea, if you’re a smoker, you know what happens to your cigarettes when you leave one in the pack half smoked (it tastes less like tobacco and more like an ash tray), so I don’t see that trend as one which will gain much momentum. But Rox’s comment about making a portable ash tray caught my attention (although I think a bio-degradable filter is a GREAT idea!) and I think I have some relevant information to share.
A few years ago, I was studying abroad in Japan. My host father, a smoker, drove the family and I down to a park the first day I arrived to show me around. When we arrived at the park, we both lit up cigarettes and began walking down a path. I finished my cigarette, and being an American from the mainland, I flicked my cigarette butt off the path and continued walking. I was utterly speechless when my host father RAN after the butt to pick it up and place it into a tiny ash tray he kept on his keychain, about the size of a dog whistle. When we returned to the parking lot, he simply emptied the ash tray, and we went home. Since that moment, I have never thrown out a cigarette butt; and although I do not own a nifty cigarette keychain (but I would if I could find one!), I will hold on to them or put them in my pocket if there is no trash can readily available.
As Americans living a country with a relatively low popluation density, we sometimes take our space and our planet for granted (what’s one tiny cigarette butt going to hurt?). We can learn much from the Japanese, who due to lack of living space and exhorbitant utility costs, have become conservation innovators.
For instance, when you flush a Japanese toilet, there is a faucet on the back of the tiolet with which you wash your hands. The water then flows into the bowl of the toilet, recycling the water you used to wash your hands. They also have a very unique garbage disposal system. They discovered that placing wastebaskets in schools and offices encouraged people to throw all of their trash into the wastebasket instead of sorting the trash and recycling it. They have since phased out wastebaskets, and instead you will find three full-size trash cans in every hallway: Paper, glass/cans/plastic, and combustables. While it is a minor inconvenience to hold onto your empty Pepsi can for the duration of the class period, it is a small price to pay for a cleaner environment, and one we can all afford 🙂
Much love
@Tyler – I certainly wish every smoker could share your wonderful experience with your host father. And I very much appreciate your sharing of the story and how it affected you.
In terms of personal freedoms, I welcome the discussion. I am always curious to hear a smoker’s view on why MY personal freedoms to have a smoke-free experience at a bar, restaurant, or even when in traffic are different than their freedom to produce the pollution. I’m careful NOT to say “Smokers can’t smoke.” I’m saying that their choice to smoke should not affect me.
I loved your example, Rox, of the ideal person that makes an effort to improve the community environment. I’ve done similar things volunteering to clean up parks, picking up trash occasionally, and so on but have largely surrendered to those who don’t feel the same way.
I don’t like it but I don’t let it pile on anxiety which it could easily do with our trash strewn streets in NYC. We have an equilibrium that is far from my ideal but the positives about city life weigh heavily on the other side.
What I think is behind this back and forth are those that don’t want to acknowledge that we are a community.
Shane, I took the time to visit the Beach Walks page to share ideas on cleaning up the environment in response to a podcast about cleaning up the environment. I do not believe there is a way to frame this discussion without it becomming heated, and I do not believe it would yield positive results or alter either of our views on the subject, so I would like to spare this forum from unnessary bickering. I must respectfully decline to discuss this topic with you any further. If you really are curious about my views on this subject, I would like to refer you to South Park episode #713 titled “Butt Out”, available for free viewing at southparkstudios.com. Matt Stone and Trey Parker do a pretty good job of covering most of my points, and it’s funny! Take care!
@Tyler – Thanks for info on South Park Studios and episode #713.
If anyone else is interested, here’s the direct link to the episode.
I’ll let the viewers come to their own conclusions on this one. 😉
As a former second-hand smoke victim, I am now extremely allergic to cigarette smoke. I do not have the freedom to stay in any environment should someone light up; I black out almost immediately. So it remains an environmental issue for some of us.