We all have seen many viral challenges on social media which are useless and good for nothing but a group of teens in France started a very important viral challenge that motivates the world to clean up cigarette butts.
An 18-year-old named Amel Talha who is a student and returned to medical school came through a post of her friend Jason Prince on Twitter and it inspired her to start the movement.
Jason had tweeted a picture of an empty water bottle that he had filled with cigarette butts writing, “20 minutes to fill this 1-liter bottle in an area of less than 50m. This is extremely serious.”
One of her friends, Christian Musitu Swamu retweeted the photo, writing: “It isn’t much, but if everybody did it, that would be something cool.”
Talha was inspired to see the post and she thought to come up with the idea of filling the bottles with cigarette butts. She thought to create a catchy hashtag to spread the word.
“#FillTheBottle would be cool I think,” she tweeted.
Her plan succeeded and within 24 hours many people joined the movement and did their part, the hashtag went viral everywhere from Bulgaria and Switzerland to South Africa and Tahiti.
Talha told LADbible: “I think it is very important to make people realize that this movement is here to make them wake up, make them realize that the situation is critical, that we have to do something and now.”
Merci à tout ceux qui se sont déplacer à châtelet , en quelques heures seulement et sûr un périmètre de 2km … #FillTheBottle @BoyUnited_ @_darkdunbar @FarahTlh @Pumbruuuhhh @ImAnAlbatrowz @MeriemHanab @j0ystickudasaii @poootatooooo @CharlesBaudry pic.twitter.com/pM9HxkAUrb
ADVERTISEMENT — Hauru’s Waifu ? (@AmlTlh) August 4, 2019
She recommended people to download apps like Too Good To Go to cut down on waste or Ecosia to plant trees is a good place to start, along with ‘picking up trash.’
Keep Britain Tidy Chief Executive Allison Ogden-Newton told LADbible: “Keep Britain Tidyare acutely aware of the issues that cigarette litter present to the environment. Cigarettes are the number 1 littered item throughout the UK, and in fact are found at 79% of the sites we survey [79% of the 7,200 sites surveyed for the Keep Britain Tidy Local Environmental Quality Survey of England 2017/2018].”
“We know from our extensive research that many smokers do not think of cigarettes as litter. However as well as plastic, cigarette filters are comprised of thousands of chemical ingredients, including arsenic, lead and nicotine, all of which can leak into land and marine environments.”
“We would encourage everyone to get involved in the #FillTheBottle challenge to help clear-up the mess but also pass the message via social media that littering butts just isn’t acceptable.”