The Beach & Cigarettes

If there is one thing that was clear to all of us who attended the disturbing and challenging, but ultimately uplifting Sustainability Education summit in Berin last May, it was that each one of us had to become an agent of change; to “be a meteor" as Alfred Schmits of The Conscious Company, so persuasively put it. 

I would like to share with you how I, in my own small way, have become a meteor. 

As a political figure at the local level on my island, I carried out an initiative with my group in the plenary session of the municipal council. The proposal was clear, achievable and the results would be tangible; to reduce the number of cigarette butts on our beaches. Sometimes raising awareness of and educating about an issue is not enough, there needs to be a legal prohibition for this to take effect.

We choose one of the most emblematic beaches of the municipality Cala d’Hort which is located in an area of ​​special protection. Thanks to the support of the other political groups, from 2020 this beach has been declared; “Playa sin Humos” – a smoke-free beach. Smoking will be prohibited on the sand on the beach. Instead, specific smoking areas with ashtrays will be set up away from the beach where information panels will also be located. In this way, Cala d’Hort has become the first beach in our municipality where smoking is prohibited, which should, we hope, eliminate cigarette butts from ending up in the sea, at least in this area. 

More importantly, through our systems thinking approach of combining regulation with education, our aspiration is that the “why” of this initiative will resonate and spread, to positive effect, along the coast. After all, there’s no point preventing cigarette butts going into the sea here, if they end up going in elsewhere.

Now it seems that the world has stopped, we will have to see how all this will affect the ways of living and the economic systems of countries and communities.