Together, let’s save our ecosystems!
On September 21st, 2020, the Evalulab team rolled up their sleeves once again to make a difference for the environment. For two years now, the team has been cleaning up the area around their building with the “butts Chore”. Last week, almost three large bags of cigarettes were collected in just a few minutes by the group.
The scourge of cigarette filters thrown on the soil is a major source of pollution that affects the quality of our rivers, in turn affecting our oceans. In a single non-biodegradable cigarette butt, there are over 5,000 compounds, of which 150 are considered highly toxic.
Annually, the weight of these thrown out filters is approximately 175,200 tonnes, according to the World Health Organization[1], which adds to this calculation 1,800,000 tonnes of packaging made of paper, ink, cellophane, aluminum glue, and 2 million tonnes of plastic.
The City of Montreal began in 2017 a pilot project intended to recover and recycle thousands of cigarette butts: “To date, the project had 620 ashtrays installed in 8 municipalities on commercial streets”, underlines the City, specifying that the cigarette butts represent around 30% of the waste found in public areas. [2]
Through its initiative, Evalulab wishes to protect the St. Lawrence River from the waste that litters the ground around its building and hopes to have a direct impact on the quality of life of its employees by ensuring them a clean and healthy environment.
But the most important message that Ms. Elisabeth Fiquet, President of Evalulab, would like to deliver is that in addition to recycling cigarette butts, the ideal would be to raise awareness of the environmental benefits of quitting smoking.
Evalulab, being a company concerned with health, hygiene, and the quality of the environment, supports all actions aimed at reducing pollution caused by cigarette butts.
#environment #together #pollution
[1] OMS official site : https://www.who.int/home
[2] Source : https://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/environnement/megots-cigarette-premiere-source-dechets-oceaniques/?fbclid=IwAR2oQNJUrK0aCQRGnwqnlF6M7E82LMn6Rm-S1EMs_Nb3ox9yNfX7LULnHuQ
