Santa Cruz-After Earth Day, the Santa Cruz City Council made a commitment to the environment by drawing attention to things that have been hidden from people's sight for about 200 years.

Santa Cruz is known for its forward thinking and progressive policy making. Recently, the coastal reserve has turned its attention to tobacco and its harm to humans and the environment.

On Tuesday, the city council unanimously agreed to pass a resolution instructing itself to seek possible policies to reduce tobacco waste throughout the city and its beaches. According to the Truth Initiative, an organization focused on tobacco education and prevention, cigarette butts are the most littered item in the world.

"90% of people in California don't smoke, but we all have to bear the burden of this waste everywhere," said Tara Leonard, a health educator for the Santa Cruz County Coalition for Tobacco Education and Prevention.

Cigarette butts can be found almost anywhere that people are familiar with. Ass littered the sidewalks, fertilized the trails, and buried himself on the beach. According to Leonard, on average, beach cleanup can collect 2,000 to 3,000 cigarette butts in two hours.

Tobacco pollution is extremely toxic to plants, animals and fish. A 2009 study by San Diego State University studied the impact of discarded cigarette butts on marine life. The study found that even a very low concentration of cigarette butts would kill 50% of the fish participating in the study. Both smoked cigarettes and unsmoked cigarette filters can cause fish death.

"These chemicals seep into the ground and poison plants. They seep into the water and kill fish," Leonard said. "We are so used to it that it is almost invisible. When you start talking with people about it, when you let them see it, they can't stop seeing it."

Enter Ben Jakins and Taylor Lane. The initial attempts by the two to win the local surf craft construction competition turned into a global sport almost overnight. The competition requires participants to build a surfing craft, such as surfboards or surfboards, out of upgraded recycled materials, and these wastes are reused for useful things.

My friends participated in the competition for the first time in 2016 and didn't see them on the leaderboard, so they went back to their drawing board. After evaluating the winners and losers of the competition, Judkins and Lane determined the surfboards made by all the winners.

At that time, the two had the idea of ​​a surfboard made of cigarette butts. In 2017, they won the competition with a cigarette surfboard, which really worked-this is the requirement of the competition. Follow-up reports from the Orange County Register newspaper sparked a global movement.

"The next morning, we woke up to find that it was a bit like a viral spread. Since then, we have been committed to making an environmental surfing documentary," Lane said. "This is much more serious than we initially realized. Throughout the filming process, we realized that this was a heavy subject, but we used the beauty of the surfboard to tell a more interesting and fascinating story."

The success of the first board prompted Lane and Judkins to build 15 boards. As Ryan builds more boards, they become more practical, which he said is important for further dissemination of information.

Lane pointed out that all 15 boards were made from cigarette butts recovered from the beach. This move is intentional. In this way, Ryan and Jakins can connect the story of cigarettes and beach trash.

"It is a functional art to have such a wide range of responses to the circuit board. Such a small waste is a bigger problem in general," Jakins said. "You don't think that cigarette butts and surfing are this traditional combination. Everyone has this true heartfelt reaction to it."

Judkins, who has a degree in film from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Lane, a graduate of San Jose State University who has a degree in design, began filming in 2017. Documentary.

Judkins said: "This has made many surfers realize that they can give back to the ocean in some form. From business to education, politics to personal changes, surfboards are the connecting line between all these different roles."

Jakins and Lane plan to use this documentary to publicize the environmental impact of tobacco waste, especially the ocean. They also want to bring the boards and movies they built to school to educate the children.

Although the film talks about a serious issue, the team hopes to avoid the doom and gloomy clichés of nature documentaries. Rather, it aims to inspire people to make a difference in their communities.

"We want this movie to give people a different feel. People get the environment in a mess," Lane said. "What people need is solutions, they need inspiration. This is the main focus of this movie."

The cigarette surfboard and its supporting film are the result of a grassroots movement on the global stage. It is one of many initiatives aimed at improving the environment and eliminating tobacco waste.

Santa Cruz is no stranger to tobacco waste awareness and prevention. The county banned smoking in public places in 1985, 19 years before the ban took effect nationwide.

An amendment to a city ordinance in 2009 took the ban even further. The decree prohibits smoking near piers, beaches, boardwalks, and along the popular walking and biking path West Cliff Drive. Ten years later, California law followed.

“When you start with small things, it sometimes gets promoted,” Congresswoman Martine Watkins said of the power of local policy. "As more jurisdictions across the state start to do this, you will start to see changes in state policies. This is a cool thing you can do at the local level to reflect your health values ​​as a city ."

Despite policies restricting the use of tobacco in public places, cigarette butts are still everywhere. The answer to this contradiction is the lack of law enforcement. The response to the aforementioned ineffective enforcement is equally puzzling.

Leonard said that tobacco waste mitigation policymakers have been told to add more ashtrays in the area, and smoking waste will be reduced. However, such a solution is counterintuitive. Adding ashtrays in non-smoking areas is essentially a contradiction.

However, tobacco cigarettes are not the only problem. The advent of electronic cigarettes and vaporizers hindered efforts to reduce tobacco waste.

They cause tobacco waste in a similar but different way to traditional cigarettes. Leonard said that e-cigarettes and vaporizers do not leave cigarette butts, but instead leave cartridges that leak nicotine juice, similar to the way filters leak tobacco residue.

Electronic cigarettes also have a unique problem with nicotine products. Their batteries need to be handled properly, otherwise it will bring additional environmental risks. E-cigarettes and vaporizers are also popular among minors, which led the Watsonville City Council to ban sales in 2019.

At the end of 2018, a similar grassroots campaign banned the sale of flavored e-cigarette juices in Santa Cruz. The policy quickly spread to the entire county and eventually reached the state level by the end of 2020.

"All these things take time, but I think the importance of starting locally is to establish a real stronghold," Lane said. "The next town is like,'Maybe we can try it too.' It always starts from a very small base and grows longer."

Leonard said that in order to implement changes, legislators and organizers must address tobacco-related issues. The goal is for retailers to imagine what their store would look like if there were no tobacco products on the shelves. With the advent of the legislature, the public has been educated and retailers have the opportunity to substitute other products for tobacco.

Although the city council's action on Tuesday only acknowledged the issue, it opened the door for further discussion. Congressman Justin Cummings (Justin Cummings) proposed a possible ban on the use of plastic lighters.

"This is really just the beginning of a conversation. Ideally, we want to change policy at the state level," Watkins said of the resolution. "It has a lot of potential. This is what we are exploring. How do we start the conversation, how do we raise awareness and how do we promote this."

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