The Rubbish Youths organisation carried out a campaign to collect cigarette butts on the river bank near Sokha Hotel on the Chroy Changvar peninsula in Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changvar district.

In one month of the campaign, they collected more than 100,000 and will display them to the public. Phnom Penh municipal Department of Environment officials supported the activity but encouraged the group to work more closely with authorities.

Rubbish Youths founder San Dara Vit said on May 9 that the group have been campaigning to collect cigarette butts thrown away by smokers in the open spaces of the riverbank near the hotel for more than a month. They began in April.

Dara Vit said the campaign was to make people aware of the illegal dumping of rubbish in shared public spaces, especially by smokers. It aimed to inspire people to take better care of the environment by throwing their cigarette butts or rubbish into the trash.

He said the youths initially collected the rubbish themselves, but later increased their haul by buying from homeless children and scavengers. He paid 5,000 riel ($1.25) per box of butts, saying each box can hold from four to five hundred butts. He resold the collected butts for 100 riel each.

Vit said that those who bought them were general philanthropists who love the environment, and that there was no commercial application for them.

He noted that when he advertised the butts on the Facebook page of Rubbish Youths, many philanthropists stepped up to buy them. In one month of selling cigarette butts, he sold more than 100,000 for more than 10 million riel.

“We sell them to philanthropists, who are buying the cigarette butts from the riverbank and making sure they end up where they belong – in the trash. We have inspired many people to buy several hundred each, with some purchasing more than a thousand. We use the money to pay the scavengers and children who bring them to us,” he said.

He said that no firms had been made yet, but Rubbish Youth wanted to hold an exhibition of the butts in public, in the hope it would make some people wake up to the damage that is being done.

“I am storing the butts at my house. So far, we have collected more than 100,000. We hope to show the public just how many are being thrown in the street – right next to the river that we all depend on. We want to work together to solve this problem,” he added.

Keat Rainsy, director of the Phnom Penh municipal Department of Environment, said on May 9 that environmental officials have carried out a number of similar activities to clean up the environment. The Rubbish Youth campaign is a great start to participating in inspiring care for the environment he said, but at the same time, he would rather they coordinate their actions with the department.

“The idea of individual groups like this picking up one specific item from one specific location is fine, but it is not as far reaching as genuine education and outreach programmes. We need to be aware that there is around 3,000 tonnes of garbage generated every single day in Phnom Penh. What they are doing is great for publicity, but it is really just a very small part of the problem,” he said.

He added that in order to inspire more people to participate in cleaning up the environment, from May 16 to 24 the environmental department will conduct seminars and inspirational trainings in 20 schools in the 15 districts of Phnom Penh.

He said that as part of these educational outreach programmes, large trash cans will also be donated to some of the schools.