The Lake Huron Centre for Coastal Conservation's Butt-Free Beach program is expanding this year.
Coastal Outreach Specialist Rhiannon Moore explains the Centre started the program last year with five beaches and has extended the program to seven beaches along the Lake Huron shoreline this year. The program will reach 9 beaches next year.
Moore says they do some promotional events on some weekends throughout the summer but the campaign runs all summers and there is signage as well as recycling receptacles and portable ash trays so smokers don't have to leave the butts on the beach.
She points out cigarette filters are made of plastic so they pose a risk to local wild life and they also leach toxic chemicals from the cigarette which becomes a water quality issue as well as a threat to the health of humans.
Moore refers to leaving cigarette butts on the ground anywhere as one of the last socially acceptable form of littering and that's something they're hoping to change.