Cigarette butts are seen in this photo provided by the Yongsan Ward office.
SEOUL, Feb. 10 (Korea Bizwire) — Seoul’s central district of Yongsan will launch a compensation program for those who pick up cigarette butts tossed on the street, officials said Thursday.
Under this program, the Yongsan Ward office will issue compensation depending on the weight of the cigarette butts collected.
The amount of compensation is set at 20 won per 1 gram and paid when the weight of collected cigarette butts exceeds 500 grams per month.
In other words, if you bring 500 grams of cigarette butts to the district office, you can receive compensation of 10,000 won (US$7.90).
The weight of a single domestic cigarette is estimated at about 0.9 grams.
Given that the length of a cigarette butt is equivalent to about one third of that of an unsmoked cigarette, an individual would have to collect more than 1,600 cigarette butts to receive 10,000 won.
The district office will receive cigarette butts from 2 p.m.-5 p.m. every Thursday (the next day if Thursday is a holiday). When measuring, the weight of foreign substances is deducted and wet cigarette butts are not collected.
Any citizen over 20 years of age living in the district can participate in the program.
“The administrative power of the district office is not enough to clean cigarette butts on time,” an official at the district office said.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
