Fresh Peer Educators Educating Peers at Southeastern (Fresh PEEPS) is hosting a Big (Cigarette) Butt Round Up this Wednesday, Sept. 28 in the Student Union from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Although the event is run by Fresh PEEPS, it is open for anyone interested. All volunteers will receive a free t-shirt as well as refreshments while they pick up cigarette butts throughout campus. The purpose of this event is to increase tobacco awareness and to improve the campus environment.
“A lot of people don’t realize that cigarette butts are not bio-degradable,” said Annette Baldwin, Fresh PEEPS Advisor. “They’re not made out of cotton and they actually take like 25 years to bio-degrade. When you throw your cigarette butt on the ground, it becomes an environmental issue.”
Fresh PEEPS is a branch of PEEPS that focuses on tobacco awareness, as opposed to drunk driving awareness and prevention. They hold meetings every Monday at 5:30 p.m. in Room 227 in the Student Union. The group then joins with the PEEPS meeting at 6:00 p.m. These meetings are open to anyone interested.
Fresh PEEPS has three big events planned for this semester. The first big event, called “Big Butt Round Up,” will be held this Wednesday and focuses on keeping the environment clean.
The second big event called “Dance Your Butts Off” will be held on Oct. 13 with the theme “it’s hard to stay really physically active and smoke at the same time.”
The third big event, called “American Smoke-out Adventure Run” will be held on Nov. 9 with the theme “breathing shouldn’t be an obstacle.”
Their grant, which is funded by the Louisiana Public Health Institute, makes these events possible. The events are advertised through flyers and Facebook.
According to the article “Cigarette Butts cover campus” from Daily Campus News at SMU, “Each year in America 176,000,000 pounds of butts wind up on the ground and this can cost the average university around $30,000 to clean up their campus.”
Fresh PEEPS hopes that through this event smokers will begin to dispose of their cigarette butts more responsibly, resulting in a cleaner campus.
“We’re not anti-smoker, we just really want clean air on campus,” said Baldwin. “The ultimate goal is to have a 100 percent tobacco free campus. There are 500 campuses nationwide that are 100 percent tobacco free.”
For more information regarding the effects of cigarette litter go to cigarettelitter.org. For more information regarding fresh PEEPS and their upcoming events email abaldwin@selu.edu or find them on Facebook at http://facebook.com/freshpeeps.freshcampus.