Picking up cigarettes from pavement cracks on your knees: In one clean-up day, Peukenzee removed 5,000 butts from the campus

Guilty conscience

Dodge: “We find it very important to show how many cigarettes there are on campus without attacking smokers. We do so by not sweeping the cigarette buts into a pile, but instead by doing this monk's work on our knees on the ground. In this way, we do play a little on people's guilty conscience. We want smokers to think: here I am, thoughtlessly throwing my cigarette but on the ground, while other young people have to dig with their fingers between the pavement tiles to clean up the cigarettes.”

As team leader at Campus, Mobility and Logics, Alfons Kuster is responsible for implementing the smoking policy together with his colleagues. To help him do so, he turned to Peukenzee. He calls the back of the Grotius building one of the hotspots where lots of smokers gather. Kuster: “Especially under the awning at the back of the building. The university library is another location where many students and employees smoke even though it is not allowed. And the same is true of the Huygens building. Smokers there don't even bother to walk to the pole to throw away their cigarettes. The places where Peukenzee found the fewest cigarettes were the Lecture Hall Complex and the Spinoza Building.”

Dodge: “I notice that students are more concerned with sustainability these days: they cycle more, opt for oat milk in their cappuccino, and make a conscious decision to fly less. In so many areas, we want to do the right thing, but despite cigarettes having such a huge impact on the environment, smokers are still not willing to take responsibility for doing the right thing.”

Dodge looks around. “Both to the left and to the right, there is a bin within a few metres. Not to mention the ten smoker's poles along the boundaries of the smoke-free campus. And yet, it is apparently too much of an effort for smokers to stroll over to the wastebasket.”

In collaboration with Radboud University, Peukenzee is also handing out a free pocket ashtray. Dodge: “Smokers can use it to deposit thirteen cigarette butts that they might otherwise have thrown on the ground. To make it more appealing for students, we emphasise that these ashtrays can also be used at festivals or in the park. Recently, we did notice that many students and employees have started carrying these ashtrays.”

Full buckets

Around lunchtime, the five head over to the university library with their full buckets. In front of the entrance, signs and pavement stones announce that smoking is forbidden. Yet students and staff often find themselves walking into the library through a haze of smoke.

Dodge: “We go there with our bucket in hand to talk to smokers. We make smokers aware of the fact that seven to ten billion cigarettes end up on the streets every year in the Netherlands. If they want to continue smoking, they should do so outside campus boundaries on public municipal ground. In the process, we draw people's attention to the environment and the importance of not just throwing cigarette butts on the ground.

The backdrop of autumn leaves works as camouflage for cigarette butts, making them almost invisible in the street scene. Dodge: “Everyone who joins a campaign day at Peukenzee is trained to spot butts. I would encourage everyone to take two hours off and walk around the city or your neighbourhood and pick up all the cigarette butts you see. I can tell you from experience: you will not be able to ‘unsee’ how many of them there are.”

The evaluation revealed that Peukenzee picked up some 40,000 cigarettes on campus in the course of six clean-ups. The cigarette waste is converted into sheet material,which is then used to make various items such as tables, chairs, dustbins and stands to promote reuse. Kuster: “I am waiting to receive two tables made from cigarette waste.”

Did you know?

· Approximately 90% of a cigarette consists of cellulose acetate, a type of plastic that is not biodegradable?

· It can take up to 12 to 15 years for a cigarette butt to apparently disappear, and even then tiny particles remain that cannot be seen with the naked eye?

· One cigarette can pollute up to eight litres of water because of the more than 3,000 toxins it contains?

Smoke-free campus

It is important that the campus provides a healthy, safe, and pleasant environment for everyone. A smoking ban therefore applies on campus and in Radboud University buildings. Together with the Radboud university medical center and HAN University of Applied Sciences grounds, all of the Heyendaal Campus has been smoke-free since August 2020. See here for the boundaries of the smoke-free campus.