REPORTAGE
Alert and educate is the goal of #FillTheBottle. The volunteers of the operation must pick up as many butts as they find in the streets to educate the youngest of the environmental impact of this pollution. Europe 1 went to Strasbourg to follow the initiative.
It is in small groups that participants walk the aisles with a plastic bottle in their hands. Armed with gloves, they collected nearly 10,000 butts in three hours, or about fifteen bottles. Hugo is a student in graphic design: "Just on small square meters the number of butts that can be found is amazing, it shocked me to see so many butts in such a small place, it's impressive, even alarming and shocking ".
"A butt it takes 12 years to degrade"
Jeanne is at the initiative of the event, its purpose, to educate smokers. "It's so important because a butt takes 12 years to break down." Butts are not self-degradable but photo-degradable, "it means that it is degraded with ultraviolet rays.All substances remain in the earth," says Jeanne.
Even in front of garbage cans, the butts line the ground and it is, resigned, that Laurana picks them up with the shovel "it is sad to say but it is really a habit, it is like the dead leaves put on the ground or the pieces of sticks are included in the urban landscape, so this has become a phenomenon that needs to be addressed, "says the volunteer.
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Soon these pickup operations will multiply in the city center of Strasbourg.