The brain behind Kenton-on-Sea’s Doo Doo Monster has done it again, this time with big cigarette butts!
Kenton-on-Sea, South Africa (22 September 2025) – Last year, we wrote about the community’s solution to discarding pet waste and preventing single-use plastic, brought to life by Mike Wells.
The Doo Doo Monster, who lives just below the Bushman’s car park at the beach, allows beach-goers to discard their dog’s waste down his blue shute. The waste drops into a bottomless drum buried underground.
The community feature kicked off quickly and has been used as a reliable way to get rid of dog doodies (nobody wants to step on that trap at the beach), and rely on plastic less.
Now, Mike has come up with a totally new design that draws attention to another form of litter that can take up to 10 years to decompose. Cigarette butts.
Yup, ‘stompies’, especially the plastic ones, can take ages to decompose and the planet is covered in them. Apparently, out of the 6 trillion cigarettes smoked worldwide every year, 4.5 trillion of them are left to litter the environment.
Adding to that shock, the chemicals that stompies leak into the environment are dangerous. There’s over 4000 of them. Including arsenic, lead and nicotine. When improperly disposed of, these toxins leach into soil systems and natural water sources. Like the sea, where marine life is directly impacted by all forms of litter.
Plus, a beach littered with cigarette butts is unsightly and gross, simply put.
That’s why Mike’s latest creation is genius. To drive the point that stompies are bad for the environment in the most glaringly obvious way he could, he’s created giant butts and placed them on the beach with an important message.
“Don’t be a flicking idiot! This is litter too!”
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A community member of Kenton-on-Sea, Debbie Park-Dobell, took to Facebook to share her enthusiasm for Wells’ latest masterpiece, first spotting the installation at the slipway and later at Bushman’s Mouth.
Hopefully, this will make smokers think twice before flicking their stompies off without a second thought. Keep it in your pocket. Keep it in your cigarette pack. Recycle an effervescent tube and use it as a makeshift ashtray. Do anything but contribute to the problem. You’ll be a lekker human for it.
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