This B.C. Day long weekend you can get paid and help save the environment. All you have to do is bring in some cigarette butts.

Michael Wegner is the organizer of Jam One in the Can, which will pay five cents per butt picked up off the streets or elsewhere. Just bring them to Party Crashers at 2642 Quadra St. on Saturday, Aug. 3 between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Bring in 100 cigarette butts, get five bucks. Bring in 1,000 and you can receive $50, the maximum amount given out to butt collectors. The person or team that brings in the most can also receive a $500 bonus. 

It’s all part of Wegner’s effort to clean up the island and raise awareness about new solutions that can combat pollution. 

“We have two streams happening: one is to raise awareness of the problem of pollution created by cigarette butts; the other is a future goal that we hope to see in place [which] is an eco- and deposit fee on butts,” Wegner said. 

“In B.C. with the 2.8 billion cigarettes sold in a year, we could raise $280 million in revenue. Nationally it would be billions. We can take a huge problem and solve it with nickels.” 

Colin Savage, a Love Where You Live volunteer, said he stashed thousands of butts in the bushes in anticipation of the event, only to find them stolen.

“Just a nickel is creating a huge shift in attitudes and behaviours,” reiterated Wegner. 

All of the cigarette butts collected will be sent to Teracycle for free recycling. Even if you go to your local casino and empty out their ashtrays, Wegner is still happy because they will avoid going to the landfill. 

Wegner is also acutely aware of the possibility that the initiative will be so successful that they will run out of money to give away. 

“Running out of money is a good sign and a clear indicator we need to move forward faster with bigger steps. When we run out of money I’ll be handing out hot dogs until I run out of those,” said Wegner. 

A World Wildlife Fund study found that cigarette butts are the number one form of litter on shorelines, with approximately 560,432 cigarette butts found on Canadian shorelines in 2018.

The filters in cigarette butts are made up of thousands of plastic fibers which take years to break down and become micro-plastics. 

“Butts are probably approaching the number one contributor to micro-plastic,” Said Wegner.