Inland Litter Butts In at Beach

The rain is gone, the air is crisp and the skies are clear. But at beaches across Southern California, the sand and water are littered with that telltale sign of a passing storm: cigarette butts and other litter.

To sanitation officials and lifeguards, piles of cigarette butts are proof that the much-touted smoking bans -- while reducing secondhand smoke -- won’t do much to keep beaches clean. Indeed, a new report by Los Angeles County’s Department of Beaches and Harbors found no change in the amount of cigarette butts littering two public beaches, despite a trial smoking ban this summer.

Rather, officials believe the vast majority of the butts come not from beachgoers but from smokers inland who toss their butts on sidewalks and streets. Rains wash them and other debris into storm drains and to the beach.

In an effort to reduce the litter -- and under pressure from state and federal regulators to curtail pollution flowing into storm drains -- cities are giving away portable ashtrays and placing butt receptacles at bus stops and outside bars, restaurants and other places where cigarettes are tossed.

Glendale, for example, is experimenting with outdoor ashtrays placed along a three-block stretch of Brand Boulevard where people gather to smoke. A count of cigarettes before and after the program started showed a decrease in the number of butts littering the ground.

Officials said they were trying to combat an ingrained mind-set.

“People who would never so much as drop a gum wrapper on the ground, let alone a can or anything like that, will drop a cigarette butt on the ground, step on it and think they’ve done the right thing,” said Carrie Gallagher Sussman, project director with Keep America Beautiful Inc., a nonprofit group that is helping Glendale with its ashtray program.

Outside an office tower on Ventura Boulevard in Encino recently, Doug Decauwer took a final puff from his cigarette and threw the butt on the ground. Steps away, a sign painted on the sidewalk over a storm drain warned: “No Dumping. Drains to Ocean.”

With no trashcans in sight, the insurance salesman from Venice said he had no choice but to use the Encino sidewalk as his ashtray.

“If there was something out here, I’d use it,” Decauwer said.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, cities are required to reduce the amount of refuse they release into storm drains by 10% a year for a decade.

To help the city of Los Angeles do that, voters will be asked to approve Measure O on Nov. 2. The measure calls for issuing $500 million in bonds to pay for projects that clean up polluted storm water. It would cost an owner of a home assessed at $350,000 about $56 a year for 20 years and would show up on the property tax bill.

Several cities along the Southern California coast banned smoking at beaches this summer. The main goals were to reduce secondhand smoke and stop the proliferation of cigarette butts littering the ground.

No one knows how many cigarette butts wash onto beaches. But during annual cleanup days sponsored by Keep America Beautiful, cigarette butts outnumber aluminum cans or plastic grocery bags 3 to 1, Sussman said.

Los Angeles County banned smoking this summer on its two beaches in unincorporated areas: Mother’s Beach in Marina del Rey and Topanga Beach near Malibu.

Officials, however, discovered “no appreciable change in the amount of cigarette butts found on either beach or in the beach parking lots during beach-cleaning activities,” according to a report on the three-month ban that ended Sept. 16.

The report noted that beach smokers are far from solely responsible for cigarette litter, citing runoff as another cause. Additionally, butts blow in from Pacific Coast Highway at Topanga Beach, and boaters and runoff from nearby Ballona Creek at Mother’s Beach contribute to the problem, according to Stan Wisniewski, director of beaches and harbors.

“More time is needed to study the actual [effect] on reducing beach pollution in the long run, solely attributable to the no-smoking ban,” Wisniewski wrote, “but given other ways refuse reaches these areas (and beaches in general) from adjacent areas, the results of such a study may never be conclusive.”

Glendale has long had a problem with pedestrians dropping cigarettes on the ground as they stroll the Brand shopping district. The city was selected for a pilot program sponsored by Keep America Beautiful that involved airing public service announcements in English, Spanish, Korean and Armenian urging people to dispose of cigarettes in proper receptacles.

One problem officials found was smokers are reluctant to use trash cans for fear they might start a fire. Back when smoking was still allowed indoors, smokers could simply snuff their butts in ashtrays. But now they must go outside, and officials are finding there are few places for smokers to throw away their spent cigarettes.

Glendale placed 28 outdoor ashtrays along a three-block stretch of Brand Boulevard where people congregate and smoke, including outside a gym. The ashtrays have a long neck and small hole at the top to accept only ashes and butts, not trash.

A count of cigarette butts on the ground around the fireproof receptacles found the number fell two-thirds, said Noreen Benjaminsen, a neighborhood services officer for the city.

“They think it’s just one butt. But it’s thousands,” she said of smokers. “With no smoking inside buildings anymore and no receptacles outside, it really does add up.”

So much so that business owners in other Southern California cities are placing butt receptacles outside their front doors. There are even some on the Santa Monica Pier.

“The problem is, those filters are not biodegradable,” said Shelley Luce, environmental policy director for Heal the Bay in Santa Monica. “They’re small pieces of plastic that filter out particles and chemicals from smoke that people are inhaling. It’s hard to get people to understand that dropping their butts on the ground is not acceptable.”