Mini-ash­trays and cam­paign for respon­si­ble dis­pos­al of cig­a­rette butts were test­ed at Var­jo-fes­ti­val

Mini-ash­trays made from emp­ty blood sug­ar strip cans by Zero Waste Fin­land were test­ed at the Var­jo-fes­ti­val held in august. In addi­tion, Mulper­i­me­dia cam­paigned at fes­ti­vals and on social media for respon­si­ble dis­pos­al of cig­a­rette butts. Both inno­va­tions aim to meet the chal­lenge of the Var­jo-fes­ti­val: “Cig­a­rette butts out of nature.”

Accord­ing to the vis­i­tor sur­vey con­duct­ed by the fes­ti­val, half of the respon­dents had seen the mate­ri­als of the respon­si­bil­i­ty cam­paign on social media and about 10% at the fes­ti­val. Sev­en per­cent of the respon­dents had tried the mini ash­tray, and planned to con­tin­ue using it even after the fes­ti­vals. Con­sid­er­ing the rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of shared mini-ash­trays, the num­bers can be con­sid­ered good.

Hen­na Rautio did a the­sis on the inno­va­tion test­ing as part of her stud­ies in Cul­tur­al Pro­duc­tion at Seinäjo­ki Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences. The main goal of the work was to find out how well the com­bi­na­tion of two dif­fer­ent inno­va­tions suc­ceed­ed:

“Based on the results, the inno­va­tion test­ings car­ried out was suc­cess­ful and the com­bi­na­tion of inno­va­tions pro­duced a bet­ter result than one inno­va­tion would have pro­duced. Based on the vis­i­tor sur­vey, a small part of pock­et ash­tray users also con­tin­ued to dis­pose cig­a­rette butts respon­si­bly after the event.”

The the­sis can be read here: https://www.theseus.fi/handle/10024/784894