'Clean Your Butt': A Castro Valley Nonprofit Is Cleaning Up The Bay Area One Cigarette Butt At A Time

CASTRO VALLEY, CA — For nearly a decade, an underrated group of community volunteers has come together across the East Bay to clean, green and glean.

Forestr is a nonprofit in Castro Valley founded in 2019 that runs three programs: Litter collection, operating small "pocket parks" and harvesting fruits and vegetables for local communities.

"It's kind of this full circle of cleaning the land, preparing it for greening and planting and harvesting and returning food to our community," Yonaton Hardisty, Forestr's head of the cleaning program, told Patch.

The nonprofit's most recent pilot program, "Clean Your Butt," takes the cleaning one step further, and not in the way most people may think.

The Road Starts Here

Seven years ago, Hardisty had the desire to plant trees in his community, but it turned out to be a more difficult process than he had anticipated.

So instead, he worked with Caltrans to "Adopt A Highway," Hardisty said, a program that allows people or organizations to take up and care for a one to two-mile stretch of road.

There, Hardisty and the Forestr team cleaned litter, cared for plants and even did fire abatement. But he says the cleaning got under his skin. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop finding litter everywhere.

The top three items he couldn't go without seeing were: cigarette butts, plastic water bottles and packaging material, mainly from fast food companies, Hardisty said.

So Hardisty and the rest of Forestr team sat down and tried to figure out how they could get the word out about these items.

They started with cigarette butts, the item most commonly found littered, Hardisty said.

"We don't have a town or city here, so we don’t have any filtering in our drainage system," Hardisty said about Castro Valley. "When (a cigarette butt) hits the storm drain, it goes right out to the bay."

Forestr got a sponsor in the Castro Valley Rotary, and they got to work, creating the "Clean Your Butt" program, along with the "Butt Map."

Hardisty says the idea behind "Clean Your Butt" was that the phrasing would invoke feelings in people, good or bad.

"People think it's gross, or it's hilarious," Hardisty said. "Nobody is apathetic about it, and it kind of sticks out there."

The program will officially launch in September, during Castro Valley's Fall Festival, Hardisty said.

But that hasn't stopped the Forestr team, Castro Valley Rotary Club members and other volunteers from getting their hands dirty to make a cleaner Bay Area.

The team had its first "Clean Your Butt" event last month, picking up 1,100 cigarette butts in the process. On Aug. 9, Forestr announced it cleaned up another 1,625 cigarette butts during another cleanup event.

X Marks The Butt (Hot) Spot

Cleanups, Hardisty says, are recorded on the "Butt Map."

Right now, the "Butt Map" is small, centered around Castro Valley and surrounding communities.

But the idea, Hardisty says, is to have users from all around the Bay Area report cigarette litter in their community.

"The nice thing about the map and this pilot is we’ve launched it for a large portion of the cities in the Bay Area," Hardisty said. "Some places we can't get to, but I can reach out to a city manager or the powers that be and get support for you."

Cigarette litter reported on the app appears in an orange tab called a "hotspot." Cleaned areas are then marked off with a green checkmark.

Volunteers can also upload before and after photos on the map to showcase their work.

"You can also tell us where you who you are and just own it, Hardisty said. "Because if you volunteer and do that and pick up three cigarette butts, you’re literally changing the world. "It's not going out to the bay."

A Cycle

Cigarette butts are made primarily of a slow-degrading, man-made plastic fiber known as cellulose acetate.

But instead of those butts making their way to the bay, Forestr is working with a company called TerraCycle to turn litter into consumer items, including buckets, Hardisty said.

"We’re gathering enough cigarette butts to make our first bucket," Hardisty said with a chuckle.

The "Clean Your Butt" program will last about a year before the Forestr team shifts its focus onto cleaning up plastic bottles, Hardisty said. During year three, the team will focus on picking up packaging materials.

The previous programs will continue, Hardisty said, adding that Forestr is simply "building as we go."

"It’s just such good community work, and I really want to encourage volunteerism," Hardisty said. "The beautiful thing is you need like a cup and gloves or a bag and a picker."

For information on how to volunteer or support Forestr's work, click here. To support the "Clean Your Butt" program directly, click here.