Students place red flag for every cigarette butt found in La Crosse park

7 Rivers school picked up 1,456 butts

A flag for every cigarette butt.

Turns out there were thousands of them at Powell Park in La Crosse, where students from 7 Rivers Community School spent the afternoon placing a red flag in every spot they picked up a cigarette butt.

They started with 1,000 flags. Alethia Knutson was one of the students placing flags and she was down to around two flags an hour later. Students picked up a total of 1,456 cigarette butts.

“Probably making an impact on the community,” Knutson hoped their efforts were making. “People see this and they don’t even realize, because it’s such a normal thing, that people just walk by, even when they see them on the ground.

“I think the visual affect of the red flags catches people’s eyes.”

The program was put together by the La Crosse County Health Dept. to raise awareness of tobacco use.

“It’s kind of disappointing when we find so many, because that’s what we’re trying to change,” Knutson said. “(We need to) make it less of a popular thing.

“We mainly find them over by the seats of the baseball diamond and then over by the park where the kids play. It’s good that people see how much it does affect our community and the environment.”

The health dept. says that butts are the most common litter on earth, and chemicals from them leak into the aquatic ecosystem and threaten the quality of water.

Cars slowed down on Jackson Street, checking out the small red flags placed.