Surfrider Cigarette Litter Audits

Thanks for your interest in our cigarette litter audits! Sign up links are below. 

The Project: We are monitoring the concentration of cigarette litter in 4 San Francisco locations:

• Ocean Beach Stairwell 1
• Ocean Beach Stairwell 25
• Marina Green Harbormaster Office area
• Presidio Warming Hut area

We will count and collect the cigarette butts at these locations following a predefined transect 4 times per year as part of a larger effort to reduce cigarette litter in San Francisco. 

The Roles: 

• Data collection volunteers (15 per site): For each site we need a minimum of 8 volunteers to conduct the cigarette butt audits. No prior experience or training required. 

• Cleanup captains (1 per site): Looking for volunteers interested in learning how to lead the data collection efforts. Volunteers will be trained on site to conduct the audits. Once trained, cleanup captains will lead a minimum of 1 of the cleanups each year

The Plan:

Surfrider will supply gloves, small grabbers, bags/buckets, and audit materials (recording sheet, pens/pencils). We will divide up to collect butts in predefined areas. After butts are collected, we'll count them and record the totals for each area within the site. 

We will record data using a modified version of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) marine debris transect guidelines.