Using press as messenger, anti-smoke UN helps kick butts out of Olympics

Targeting the messenger as well as the message, the United Nations environmental agency is helping to kick the butts out of the Athens Olympic Games by distributing 40,000 portable paper ashtrays to those best equipped to spread the anti-cigarette message - journalists.

Even though all venues have been declared smoke-free, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Olympic Organizing Committee want to ensure that many of the 10,000 members of the media who escape the press centres for an outside smoke are targeted in the public awareness campaign on the ecology in general and the pollutant effects of cigarette ends in particular.

“We certainly don't want to be seen as promoting smoking, but since we know

it is not possible to stop all journalists from lighting up, we would like to make sure they do so in a way that will be less detrimental to the environment," says UNEP's Communications Director Eric Falt.

Every year an estimated 4.5 trillion butts are discarded. The residue in a cigarette filter contains a cocktail of toxic chemicals which generally find their way into the water supply, and eventually the seas and oceans.

The ashtrays, made of a lightly laminated biodegradable paper, form the shape of a green cone once you open them. They have a small hole at the bottom to allow smaller particles of ash to escape, and can be covered by a lid bearing the slogan "Think Clean and Green".