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Hamilton County: No butts about it

By: Lauren Gregory
(Contact)

Included in this article

Jeanette Eigelsbach

After 23-plus hours of butt-picking, Michael Bunch is tired.

But he’s far from done.

Mr. Bunch, a 52-year-old Chattanooga resident, is on a crusade to rid the city of littered cigarette butts. He has been on a butt-picking marathon since Monday and hopes that his results — an estimated 8,000 butts bagged so far — will help the community understand why he bothers.

“This is supposed to be the Scenic City. I think it’s crazy we allow it to get to this point,” he said. “I know for every one of these I pick up, someone’s going to throw another one there, but I’ve got to do something. Otherwise, I’ll be like everyone else who’s doing nothing.”

Mr. Bunch already has obtained a business license and printed business cards for American Butt-Pickers, an organization he hopes will garner enough community support to expand and cover more area. For now, he says, “it’s just me, myself and I.”

Jeannette Eigelsbach of Scenic Cities Beautiful, the Hamilton County affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, confirmed that Mr. Bunch is the only person she’s heard of who has launched a cleanup campaign specifically targeting cigarette butts.

But she also said that he’s not alone in his desire to rid the city of the problem — several groups who pick up litter have become aware of the amount of butts on sidewalks and have tried to pick them up during their general litter campaigns.

“It’s everywhere,” Ms. Eigelsbach said. “They’re the bane of our existence.”

In fact, cigarette butts have become the most littered substance in Chattanooga — and everywhere else in America, according to Bronwen Evans, Keep America Beautiful’s national litter program manager.

Part of that has to do with indoor smoking bans that drive smokers outdoors, Ms. Evans said. But a lot of it is just a lack of understanding about the magnitude of the problem, she said.

“A lot of smokers that litter their cigarette butts would never litter a plastic cup or a wrapper,” she said. “But they don’t consider a cigarette butt litter.”

City Code includes an anti-litter provision, and Chattanooga Police Sgt. Doug Elliott, supervisor of the downtown bike patrol, said he has seen at least one officer cite someone recently for throwing down a cigarette butt. But it’s impossible for police to put much focus on the problem with so many other priorities, he acknowledged.

“We’d be citing 500 or 600 people a day,” he said.

Ms. Eigelsbach wants to strengthen the code to fall in line with a state law passed in July 2007 that allows cities to issue $50 mail-in tickets for offenses of litter under five pounds. She said she is meeting with various city officials to see if that will be feasible.

Mr. Bunch prefers to work on his own for now, though he has been asking for donations in hopes of hiring people to help him cover more ground.

The grass-roots environmentalist cruises around town in a minivan loaded with plastic bags full of the butts he has collected. Dressed in red, white and blue — except for the orange T on his hat — he strolls up and down parking lots, sidewalks and other thoroughfares with a broom and a bucket decorated with an American flag.

He estimates that he averages up to 50 butts a minute in the worst areas.

“I feel pretty confident I must have set some kind of world record with this,” he said, grinning to show off his mostly toothless mouth, which he said is the consequence of 33 years of cigarette smoking.

“Initially I thought Tennessee Butt-Pickers sounded good, but then I decided I didn’t want to limit myself,” he said. “I don’t just want to help the community. I want to help the whole country.”

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