- Three Polytechnic University students started a project to show how littered cigarette butts affect the city’s street cleaners
- Every week, Talking Points gives you a worksheet to practise your reading comprehension with questions and exercises about the story we’ve written
Social design students Oscar Lau (from left), Krson Ho, Sam Tang have collected more than 100,000 cigarette butts as part of their project to raise awareness of littering’s impact on street cleaners. Photo: Xiaomei ChenDressed in street cleaners’ uniforms and armed with tongs, university students Oscar Lau Ho-yin, Sam Tang Chung-yin and Krson Ho Ka-chung walk around Hong Kong’s street corners picking up cigarette ends.
The trio, who founded the Cigarette Butts Committee in March, are “training” in cigarette litter collection, a “sport” they joke about adding to the Olympic Games.
“It sounds like nonsense, but that’s how people became interested and curious to learn about what we are doing,” said the social design students in their fourth year at Polytechnic University. “We hope to use humour to engage the public on cleaners’ rights.”
How Cigarette Butts Committee got its start
In January, the trio was assigned in a course to come up with an idea to raise public awareness of street sweepers. After two months of conducting research and visiting public estates, the students summed up the issue in three words: unknown, unclean, and unfair.
“Cleaners face three key challenges, which are citizens’ lack of understanding of their duties, the unclean work environment, and unfair treatment and salary,” 20-year-old Lau pointed out.
The trio recalled a visit to cleaners in Tai Po. Without fans, the staff room was stuffy. Cleaners did not have a separate toilet and had to relieve themselves in a drain.
“I feel like they have no privacy at all. Even a toilet is regarded as extravagant,” expressed 22-year-old Ho.
But cleaners’ unhygienic and unfair conditions rely on the government to fix them. So the students decided to focus on the public’s lack of awareness by showing how littered cigarette butts affected cleaners.
According to the World Health Organization, cigarette butts are the most common waste item in the world. About 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded each year, polluting beaches and waterways.
Hong Kong has 581,500 conventional cigarette smokers, who consume on average about 13 sticks daily. Though the city has a HK$1,500 penalty for littering, cigarette waste is still everywhere – and cleaners are the ones who have to handle it.
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“It was only when we started picking up rubbish that we realised littering is a serious issue,” noted Tang, 23.
“Just a two-square-metre planter had more than 600 cigarette ends. People don’t care whether the cleaners can handle them,” Lau added.
To attract attention, the trio set up their Instagram account to make cigarette butt collection into an Olympic sport. They also designed a torch lighter and an orange cart decorated with the Olympic rings logo and hundreds of cigarette ends.
With their signature accessories in tow, the trio travel to new spots every week to pick up cigarette waste. So far, they have collected more than 100,000 ends.
Why community engagement is key
The course ended in June, but the trio continue to run the project. They hope their work can help people realise that every cigarette butt tossed on the ground is extra work for cleaners.
Their project has received positive feedback and helped them connect with different community groups.
“At first, environmental groups and NGOs were contacting us, and later, some students and the general public also approached us,” they said, adding that they had also worked with an artist and teen volunteers.
While cleaning up cigarette butts, the group also tries to engage with community members on the street.
“Some come to us and ask questions or say ‘add oil’,” the trio said. “We also approach smokers by helping them to light their cigarettes with our torch. [We] try to understand their smoking habit and personal stories.”
In To Kwa Wan, they met a middle-aged smoker who told them about an ashtray that used to be in the middle of the alley. It was made by smokers in the area, and people would toss their cigarette butts there. But when the government removed it and placed a new one at the end of the alley, smokers started littering.
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“Maybe the smokers found it troublesome to walk [down the alley] to throw away the butts,” suggested Lau, using this example to show why engaging with the public was key to solving problems. “Officials are used to taking a top-down approach ... instead of gathering the community to solve it.”
As this is their last year in the social design programme, the students hope to use what they have learned to build a more dynamic community.
“It is not only professionals who are able to solve the problems in the city, but every one of us can also make a change – as long as we are willing to observe our community and connect with one another,” the trio said.
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