(Host) A Saint Michael’s College senior has been working with a group of high school students to demonstrate that cigarettes aren’t just bad for your health, they’re also bad for the environment.
Kathleen Lanphear recently led a group of students from Williston to Burlington’s North Beach on Lake Champlain. The students cleaned up the litter in preparation for this spring’s Earth Day.
Lanphear, who started the beach cleanup as part of an internship at the Health Department, says it was an unpleasant sight:
(Lanphear) "The kids were absolutely amazed … at the amount of cigarette butts that you find on the ground at North Beach Park. You know, it’s this beautiful place where kids are running around and you look on the ground and it’s just completely covered with cigarette filters. And you could tell that some of them had been there for years and years and years."
(Host) The students spent two hours picking up cigarette butts and other trash at North Beach, but say there is still more work to be done there. Lanphear says the group plans to mail the cigarette butts back to one of the tobacco companies.