Campaign underway to get smokers to use pocket ashtrays to prevent wildfires. (submitted photo)

By Pete McIntyre

'Bucks for Butts'

Push for smokers to use pocket ashtrays, recycle their butts

Apr 25, 2023 | 6:00 AM

With the wildfire season ramping up, smokers in the North Okanagan are getting a not-so-subtle reminder to put out their smoking materials responsibly.

Jack Elliman, who is known affectionately as “The Butt Boss,” is the owner-operator of the Vernon company, Brain Garden, that makes pocket ashtrays.

Smokers can put their butts into the recyclable and reuseable pouches instead of discarding them out their window and possibly sparking a wildfire.

Pocket ashtrays (submitted image)

Elliman was recently awarded a ReThink grant form the Regional District of North Okanagan to take his project to next level which is recycling cigarette butts, or the “Bucks for Butts” campaign.

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“People can participate from anywhere in Canada,” Elliman told Vernon Matters. “It’s totally free. In Vernon, we have a butt barrel at the Interior Freight Recycling depot [at 4205 24 Ave.],so people can bring their ashtrays from home or their business and deposit them in the butt barrel. Anytime people are throwing their butts in the garbage, it’s literally throwing away money that could go towards a good cause.”

Elliman said they empty about 50 pounds of butts at the Vernon depot every few weeks and they hope to have a barrel at every recycling depot in Canada in the next few years.

If you can’t get to the Vernon depot, you can also mail in your butts, by going to braingarden.ca to get a shipping label that is provided.

“You slap that on a box with all your cigarette butts inside of a bag and UPS picks it up from your house and they take it to the recycler and it generates points towards our campaign,” Elliman explained.

Elliman says butts can be recycled to use mostly as “industrial lumber,’ for things like park benches and shipping pallets.

The Bucks for Butts campaign is raising money for Elliman’s current campaign which is the tobbacco waste LEWP which stands for Litter Education and Wildfire Prevention.

Elliman is distributing pocket ashtrays to different locations and businesses to give away free of charge, and he is also putting big signs on the highway.

“Local supporters like Wayside Press made our signs and Cloverdale Paint provided the paint for our signs. We’ve got some local volunteers that helped out and we took a bunch of waste material from building sites, of wood that was going to get burned, and turned them into signage,” Elliman explained.

The signs remind people not to flick their butts out the window, especially with fire season at hand.

“We have thousands of pocket ashtrays we’re distributing around the RDNO for free. They’re going to be at a few different gas stations and stores. We’re going to try and get them at City Hall, the fire department and RDNO office.”

“And I’m looking for more people and businesses that want to support the Bucks for Butts campaign by having pocket ashtrays at their location where people can come and pick one up.”

Elliman says cigarette butts have become a “somewhat socially accepted form of litter.”

“And that comes down to education,” he said. “People just don’t know that cigarettes are literally toxic waste and start fires. I started going to festivals [about 8 years ago] with pocket ashtrays and hunting out the smokers and explaining to smokers why they can’t throw their cigarette butts on the ground and it kind of took off from there.”

He has now become a global retailer of custom-branded pocket ashtrays that can include the logo and websites of businesses, municipalities and fire departments.

The RDNO grant allows Elliman to give the pocket ashtrays out for free.

For more information, check out Elliman’s website braingarden.ca.