College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Tahna Weber
Theadora Babcock
Keith Kaufenberg
Elena Velasco
Alicia Martinez
Peter Hosek
Monelle Sourdot
Brian Reid
Rodrigo Gonzalez

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Of all the urban sources that contribute to the pollution of our coastal areas, cigarettes are the most littered item in the United States and the world. The average cigarette butt contains numerous chemicals. These chemicals are diluted in the ocean and can cause significant environmental harm.

• The cigarette filter was designed to trap the toxic chemicals in the cigarette smoke from entering the smoker’s body. When submerged in water, the toxic chemicals trapped it the filter leak out into aquatic ecosystems, threatening the quality of water and many forms of aquatic life.

• Cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate (plastic) and are NOT biodegradable.

• The filters contain small plastic pieces that can interfere with the digestion of food, causing marine life to starve.

• The worst danger, of course, is the extremely poisonous chemical nicotine concentrated in each filter.

The Surfrider Foundation is one of the leading grassroots environmental nonprofit organizations dedicated to protecting our precious oceans and coastlines. The Surfrider Foundation was started in 1984 by a couple of surfers from Malibu, California. Within the next couple years other communities in California expressed their interests in expanding the organization into other parts of the state and by 1990 the first chapter was created right here in San Diego. There are now over 60 chapters nation wide and 6 international affiliates.

Surfrider’s best weapon for the fight against pollution is education. The “Hold Onto Your Butt, Our Beaches and Oceans Are Not Your Ashtrays” campaign began about 10 years ago here in San Diego. HOTYB is intended to increase awareness and support of the value of clean and safe oceans and waterways and to remind smokers to think twice before littering their cigarette butts.

Cigarette Litter comes from 4 main sources:

1. The Car Flicker (flicks butt from car window)

2. The Beach and Park Visitor

3. The Business Patron

4. The Business Employee

Our group chose to target the Business Patron, specifically the restaurant/bar patron in the Pacific Beach community. Our plan was to provide ashtrays outside those establishments

where smoking most frequently occurs. We felt that by providing ashtrays to smokers who currently don’t have access to one, we would be taking the most direct course of action in helping to create social change.

The Social and Ethical significance of this project relates to Social Contract Theory, Utilitarianism, Deontology, and Land Ethics. The idea of Social Contract Theory is to create rules for our mutual benefit. By reducing cigarette litter we are helping contribute to a sustainable system that conserves and protects our most valuable and precious resource, water. If every business was willing to surrender a small amount of energy to place and maintain an ashtray outside their business, they would greatly reduce the amount of cigarette litter that makes it into our streams and oceans. From a Utilitarian view, the benefits of reducing cigarette litter far outweigh the relatively little costs and effort of buying and maintaining an ashtray. From a Deontological perspective, the care of the earth is an important principle and it is our obligation to take care of it. The theory of Land Ethics says “an action is right when it tends to preserve the beauty, stability, and integrity of the biotic community, and it is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Reducing the amount of cigarette litter helps to preserve the biotic community.

Our original plan had included an amendment to a law; that in addition to the indoor smoking ban, establishments would be required by law to provide proper receptacles outside their place of business. In the beginning, much of our time and energy was spent on checking into any possible existing laws, permit requirements, and funding, which we estimated to be about $3000 for 25 ashtrays. Ultimately, we discovered that changing an existing law or adding a new law to the books is not something that can be done within a semester’s timeframe. With all the roadblocks we hit, we decided to rethink our project and find something we could accomplish given our time constraints and limited resources.

We then switched our focus to holding a fundraiser to raise the money for some less expensive ashtrays. As we planned for the fundraiser, we also went door to door to the businesses in the community asking for support and participation from each. At the last minute, Discover Pacific Beach, the Business Industry District of Pacific Beach, took an interest in our project and wanted to participate. After just one meeting, Discover Pacific Beach took our ashtray project and included it in their community betterment proposal they were offering to the businesses within their membership. Their plan included each participating business paying for their own ashtrays. Going through the community BID in this way will be much more effective in getting the businesses to take ownership of the ashtrays and the distribution will be much wider than if we were to do this all on our own. However, the BID will not be pitching their proposal to their members until the end of April 2004. In the meantime, we solidified a relationship with a few businesses in the community and held a press event to recognize them for being leaders in their community.

The greatest and most rewarding success of this project was the amount of people that began to respond to our idea and want to do the same in their own community. Within hours of sending out the press release for our event, Surfrider received numerous responses from all over the country asking if and how others could do the same thing in their communities. Surfrider has taken the notes from our group project and is compiling them into a manual that will help anyone to recreate this same campaign in another community. Soon, we may have “Hold On To Your Butt” Ashtrays not only all over San Diego, but quite possibly all over California and the United States.