STARS’N’BARS wins Energy Globe Award for social media environmental campaign

The STARS’N’BARS restaurant in Monaco has won the Energy Globe Award for its 2019 social media campaign to reduce ocean pollution created by discarded cigarette butts.

A cigarette contains more than 4,000 pollutants (including heavy metals, nicotine and pesticide residues) and once it is at sea it takes 15 years to decompose. One cigarette butt can pollute up to 500 litres of water.

Inspired by actions in other countries, STARS’N’BARS initiated a public awareness campaign across its social media channels, with artwork and imagery for the campaign created by Yachting Pages Media Group. STARS’N’BARS offered a free glass of beer or soda for a container filled with cigarette butts collected by customers from the local port area.

The response was immediate, with both adults and children arriving at the restaurant with bottles and glasses filled with cigarette butts. In just one month, 2,354 cigarette butts were collected, saving up to 1,177,000 litres of water.

According to MonacoLife, postings on the STARS’N’BARS Facebook page promoting the campaign were shared more than 1,300 times in less than two days, while local media also gave the campaign plenty of traction.

The innovative team at STARS’N’BARS is engaged not only in collecting cigarette butts but also conducting research to develop a technique to recycle the three waste streams of a cigarette: tobacco, paper and filter. The butts collected are used in their laboratories to find a permanent solution to this global problem.

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