Man makes it his mission to clean up 1 million cigarette butts

Cigarette butts on the beach.
(Image credit: iStock)

Jason Alexander is doing his part to help the planet, one cigarette butt at a time.

Alexander, who lives near the coast of Suffolk in England, decided in 2015 that he wanted to photograph at least 100 sunrises over the year. He kept having to move trash while taking photos so as to not ruin his shots, and realized just how much garbage there is on beaches, walkways, and parking lots. "As a society, we've become blind to a lot of the litter and plastic that we produce, in particular cigarette butts," he told The Washington Post. "Many people that I've spoken to, smokers and nonsmokers, have no idea that there's plastic in cigarette butts. And many of them ... didn't even consider cigarette butts as litter."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.