Volunteers pick up cigarette butts

Dubai: Cigarette butts dropped at the beach make finding a clear patch of sand on which to settle near impossible.

A beach clean up focused mainly on picking up cigarette ends left by smokers in the sand took place on Saturday morning on the Jumeirah Beach Residence beach front.

Staff from Wirestorm and volunteers brought together under the Volunteers in Dubai group hit the beach strip with just one goal — picking up cigarette ends that do not biodegrade.

As a team building exercise, an 11-person team from Wirestorm headed to Jumeirah Beach to pick up as much litter as possible and after one hour had already bagged around 9,800 cigarette butts.

“Cigarette butts can take up to ten years to break down and degrade. What looks like cotton in the filter is actually cellulose acetate, a type of plastic, which is designed to trap nicotine, cadmium, lead, arsenic, and other hazardous toxins. These chemicals can leach into the water when filters reach the sea. Also they are mistaken for food and often end up creating problems in the digestive tracts of birds, marine life, and certain fish” said CEO of Wirestorm, Abdul Munem Miri.

The clean up will star at 8am this morning (Nov 26) and any participants are welcomed. Teams of five can enter a competition and those with the most waste could win prizes courtesy of Wild Wadi Dubai during the event.