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First ever Broadway BUTT Challenge helps clean up the community

July 25, 2019   ·   0 Comments

By Makayla Pereira

More than a dozen local residents came together last Friday, July 19 to bring the Broadway BUTT Challenge to life.

The brainchild of Bill Dandie, planning manager of Orangeville’s The Ketchum House, the event focused on the idea of cleaning up the community’s main thoroughfare. With a background in marketing, Mr. Dandie spent several weeks before the event promoting what he says is the first annual Broadway BUTT Challenge. On the day, he was pleased to see so many like-minded individuals join him in taking up the challenge. 

Mr. Dandie explains “this was a fun way to get teams out here and have a little fun and clean up all the butts on Broadway.”

The Broadway BUTT Challenge saw four different teams work together to collect cigarette butts and other garbage along Broadway from 11 a.m. to noon. The team that collected the highest amount of cigarette butts was awarded a collection of bamboo toothbrushes, as well as a homemade trophy. 

According to Mr. Dandie, there was a reason behind creating a homemade trophy, rather than simply going out and purchasing one. He noted the idea was to congratulate the winning team, while making a statement that everything doesn’t have to be “an expensive, new purchase”. 

Mr. Dandie is currently the Plan manager of The Ketchum House, a sustainable living and eco-education centre in Palgrave. As one of their many green initiatives to improve our environment and get the community out to help Mr. Dandie organized the Butt Challenge on Broadway.

The idea for the butt challenge came from Mr. Dandie himself, he was walking along Broadway one day and enjoying what Orangeville has to offer when he noticed the alarming number of cigarette butts on the ground. 

“People don’t understand cigarette butts and their impact on the environment. They say that one cigarette butt contaminates eight gallons of water, so that’s a lot of water being wasted,” said Mr. Dandie

Mr. Dandie goes on to explain how he recently moved to a sustainable living home not far from Orangeville and is living totally off the grid in an effort to be more environmentally friendly. 

“As you know we’re in climate crisis. It was the hottest June ever on record and there has been more fires and floods than ever before. People are finally seeing it but we still need to wake them up and bring them together, I thought the easiest way to do this is hosting community events like the Broadway Butt Challenge.”

The Green Party also joined the event by bringing out many local members to participate in collecting all those cigarette butts on Broadway.

The Ketchum House website stated the following: “It’s time for society to work together and correct the damaged we have caused over the last fifty or sixty years. Our planet is suffering and will be here long after us and if we still want to co-exist with earth we need to pay our rent.

“Have we paid a cent to witness a sunset, a penny to walk through a forest or enjoy a view from a mountain top? Rent is paid through physical actions as well as investing in renewable resources, sustainable products along with lifestyle changes that will heal our planet.”

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