As part of this year’s Earth Day celebration, the Health Promotion and the Alive and Well Peer Educators invited volunteers to help clean up the campus’ cigarette waste on April 20.

“We had volunteers from all the major clubs and campus organizations and even staff members throughout different departments volunteered an hour of their time,” said Susan Krikorian, health educator at the Klotz Student Health Center. Over 75 students and faculty set out to make CSUN cigarette-free by Earth Day on Wednesday.

Volunteers had the option of helping for one or two hours and were given a paper bag, gloves, water and a free T-shirt. They were also asked to count the total of cigarette stubs they picked up.

“We had one volunteer collect 550 cigarette butts in one hour,” said Krikorian.

At the end of the day all of the butts were dumped into five gallon water containers to be put on display for Earth Day.

“I wanted to knock out two birds with one stone, I am doing this for my action project and I feel like it was a good cause,” said volunteer, Arthur Papazyan.

The initiative to clean up the campus is meant to establish a baseline assessment of cigarette waste before it goes smoke-free this fall, according to a press release for the event.

“Students are enthusiastic about doing their part and keeping CSUN smoke-free and they felt that contributing their time to CSUN Clean Up Day would contribute to the policy coming next fall,” said Krikorian.