Josephine Jones reinforces positive education to clean beaches with her uplifting anti-litter campaign “The Only Butt campaign”. Since 2011, just herself, Josie Jones has collected 5.6 tonnes of plastic on the beaches of Port Philips Bay, in Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia. For her actions, she has received the 2020 Victoria Local Hero Award in the Australian of the Year Awards! Check on this incredible environmental warrior and get inspired!
But why Josie Jones created “The Only Butt campaign”?
“if we were able to reeducate people to put their butts in the bins, then we would be able to have plastic out of the oceans, that’s why we started it” she told us.
Cigarette butts are plastic. They represent 50% of the litter on beaches and foreshore. While Josie Jones started picking plastic on the beach of Rye in the Mornington Peninsula; she realised these two facts were rather unknown to the general public. She naturally thought that if smokers and everybody would be informed and educated about these, finding cigarette butts on the sand, and in the ocean, could become a bad memory. This graphic designer came up with a brilliant idea. She is using her skills to engage and educate everyone to prevent the wrong “butts” on the beach. This is how she started the creative “The Only Butt campaign”.
First, she designed posters such as bin posters and posters which were installed in shops to draw attention to the problem. Freestanding ashtrays were also set up in common smoker areas to encourage trashing cigarette butts where they belong. Then, Josie’s vision of the campaign, based on fun, but also on strong and clear messages, had a powerful impact on behaviours. Within five months, “The Only Butt Campaign” allowed reducing littering significantly, 4305 smokers adopted the ashtrays.
“Often time, people feel that they are powerless. So we wanted to show people that you are not powerless and that you can join the campaign, it’s free, everybody’s got a butt and it’s using your butt wisely”, she said.
Surfing on the positive anti-litter, plastic-free, wave
Josie Jones is an eye-opener and a guardian of the ocean. In March 2017, a particularly severe nurdle plastic pollution touched the beach of Rye. Nurdles are very small plastic pieces used by the industry all over the world to produce plastic items. Accidentally, they can be lost and rushed to the ocean by natural agents such as the rain or winds. Each year, approximately 230,000 tonnes of nurdles end up in the ocean dramatically impacting ocean life. That day, Josie Jones was one of the main voices to alert about the situation on the beach. Together with the community, they successfully gathered the needed help to come and pick up the nurdles.
Besides “The Only Butt Campaign”, she participates in schools to educate about all plastic waste. She is helping in the “Peninsula Last Straw Campaign” which aims at replacing plastic straws with paper straws in cities of the Mornington Peninsula. 10 million plastic straws are used per day in Australia and again, a lot ends their course in the ocean! Plastic straws represent 7.5% of the plastic found on the foreshore in Australia. In March 2020, Josie Jones was working with the primary school students of St Joseph’s Primary in Sorrento, a town of the Mornington Peninsula, to implement the Peninsula’s Last Straw and show the children that they also have the power to contribute to protecting the environment. Altogether, Josie Jones is dedicating her capacity to communicate and educate to promote reducing the use of single-use -plastics to the environment.
The value that we bring is inclusion in the problem solving, we also encourage a community of people who share a common value of clean environments and we do it in a fun way.” She explains.
How to help Josie Jones?
Join “The Only Butt campaign”!
“I would like to see The Only Butt Campaign become a bigger campaign” Josie Jones told us.
Spread the word!
“having the opportunity to raise a conversation around cigarette butt littering, is really great. Having conversations about any issue is raising awareness” she said.
What in the immediate future?
Josie Jones would now like to see the simple and efficient actions she initiated been further followed up!
“It would be great to able to see some of the initiatives we have got for hand bins on beaches because we find that enabling people to do the right thing actually rises the standard,” she said.