Albany park clean-up and chalk the walk
Reality Check members recently spent a Sunday afternoon picking up litter and “chalking the walk” at Swinburne Park in Albany. In one small area near the playground and soon-to-be-reopened splash pad, members cleaned up hundreds of cigarette butts along with other trash. The chalked facts and stats called attention to the harm caused by tobacco litter. In 2020 New York State banned smoking in all public parks, including in municipal parks. The clean-up made it clear that more needs to be done to foster compliance with the policy, including educating community members and posting visible signs. Many municipalities throughout the...
NYS Adult Smoking Rate Falls Below 10%
The prevalence of cigarette smoking among New York adults fell to 9.3%, marking the first time the rate has dropped below 10% since smoking rate surveillance began. The data comes from Cigarette Smoking New York State Adults, 2023, an updated reported recently released by the New York State Department of Health. In 2000, when the New York State Tobacco Control Program was established, the adult smoking rate in New York was 23.2%. “This is reason to celebrate as cigarette smoking is a leading cause of preventable death and disease in our state,” said Jeanie Orr, Director of Capital District Tobacco-Free Communities....
Art for Earth’s Sake: Students Tackle Tobacco Waste Through Creativity
For the second year in a row, we’ve had the privilege of teaming up with the talented students of local high schools to spotlight an urgent issue that affects our communities and environment: tobacco waste. This year we expanded to other Capital Region schools including Bethlehem High School, Schenectady High School, Evolve program of Watervliet High School and Albany High School. This collaborative project invites students to use their artistic voice and creative lens to design compelling posters that highlight the environmental impact of cigarette litter and tobacco waste. From discarded cigarette butts polluting sidewalks and...
Removing Tobacco Waste, One Butt at a Time
This Earth Day, our community came together to take action against one of the most littered items on the planet—tobacco waste. Cigarette butts may be small, but they’re toxic to our environment, often ending up in our waterways and harming wildlife. That’s why we organized a tobacco litter cleanup. In less than an hour, we managed to fill an entire container with cigarette butts and tobacco-related waste. That’s hundreds—if not thousands—of toxic items removed from our streets, parks, and natural spaces.
Earth Day Cleanup
Did you know that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded per year worldwide, making them one of the most littered items in the world? Or that 4.5 disposable vapes are discarded every second in the US? Please join us on Sunday April 27 at 2 pm at Beverwyck Park for an Earth Day cleanup. We are partnering with Kris Leland, a community member who helps beautify our neighborhood by picking up trash on his daily walks. You can read all about him here. Click on the photo to enlarge and scan the QR code to register or email us at contact@smokefreecapital.org
To the left is a typical tobacco product display. If you don’t use tobacco, you may not even notice, but kids do. Kids see. Kids notice. Kids remember. In fact, kids are more than twice as likely as adults to notice and remember retail tobacco marketing.