Community
13 December, 2022
Turn tiny tins into butt bins at Cairns Libraries
HELP to repurpose rubbish into something useful through Cairns Libraries in partnership with ReefClean.
Empty mint tins make perfect little butt bins to ‘Ditch the Flick’. Through the ReefClean project, Tangaroa Blue and Cairns Regional Council have set up collection points at four Cairns Libraries branches for residents to drop off empty mint tins.
Tangaroa Blue, a not-for-profit organisation, focused on removing and preventing marine debris, will collect and then rebrand the tins as part of their ‘Ditch the Flick’ campaign to encourage smokers to carry butt bins with them to help reduce litter.
Cairns Mayor Bob Manning said cigarette butts took a long time to break down and contained plastic and harmful chemicals.
“Discarded cigarette butts are an ongoing problem in the city and an even bigger problem for the marine environment when they wash out to the ocean through drains,” Cr Manning said.
“We held a clean-up in the city recently for Clean Up Cairns, and volunteers collected around 4,500 cigarette butts in under one hour in just three city streets.
“We can do so much better to protect our environment and preserve the amenity in our city.
“It is not a big ask to bin butts instead of flicking them.”
Cr Manning said re-using the tins was the best way to keep them out of landfill in Cairns because small items cannot be recycled through Council’s facilities.
Tangaroa Blue senior project coordinator, Hannah Kennedy, said more than 1,500 ‘Ditch the Flick’ butt bins had already been repurposed and distributed in Far North Queensland to people in urban litter hotspots.
Residents can drop off their mint tins at any of these four Cairns Libraries branches: City, Earlville, Manunda and Stratford Libraries, alongside the existing battery dropoff points.
If you’d like a stickered butt bin, contact hannah@tangaroablue.org
