A pair of environmental non-governmental organizations in England are using drones – and a dose of humor – to measure the volume of cigarette butts littering the city of Bristol, and convince smokers to stop illegally flicking the polluting nubs in public spaces.
The effort is being led by the group Clean Up Britain (CLUB), which kicked off its four-month consciousness-raising project called “Get Your Butt Off Our Streets” last November. In doing so, it teamed up with Ellipsis Earth, a group that taps into artificial intelligence-enhanced tech to identify, map, and measure various types of polluting material around the world. In Bristol, that involved Ellipis piloting drones around the city to work up a quantitative survey of cigarette butts littering sidewalks, parks, streets, and other public property. That 10-day aerial reading will serve as a baseline for comparison with a second UAV scan when CLUB’s information campaign to get people to dispose of…
