400K cigarette butts removed from beaches

dubai — During its ‘An hour with a cleaning worker’ initiative last year, the Dubai Municipality managed to collect over 400,000 cigarette butts with the help of community members.

The initiative has attracted over 2,242 volunteers from various categories such as employees, students, families, people of determination and those who are interested in environmental service and city cleaning, including employees from government and private establishments.

Abdul Majeed Sifai, director of the waste management department and head of the awareness team in the field of sustainable waste management at the Dubai Municipality, emphasised the importance of creating and supporting such volunteering opportunities to support preservation of the environment.

“Through community participation in the initiative, we managed to collect nearly 400,000 cigarette butts during cleaning the beaches in 2017 by using 1,100 working hours. The major participant in our campaign last year was “A Beach Cleanup Dubai” (ABCD) team, which participated in an organised way in 17 beach cleanup activities, in addition to awareness sessions for beach-goers,” he said.

“The initiative could utilise the community participation in the field of maintenance of city’s cleanliness in all its corners. The volunteers represented 48 government and private bodies with a good participation from national families. This year, we had more participation than the previous years, which reflects in the increased number of organisations and the great success tasted by the initiative through excellent media marketing for the activities on social media networks,” said Sifai.

Volunteers, who joined the community initiative, helped to undertake cleaning operations such as removing cigarette butts on beaches, random posters in commercial areas and the waste on shores as well as cleaning the industrial and residential areas.