São Paulo is a huge city and the littering of discarded cigarette butts on the street had become a very serious problem.

The main difficulty we had in fighting this problem was that people didn’t really see it as a problem at all. We’d had many previous attempts at tackling it – from sampling portable cigarette butt dispensers, to leaflets explaining the importance of proper butt disposal, but people just didn’t care enough.

So we made it impossible to ignore. We produced loads of giant cigarette butts and spread them around the city.

The success was immediate.

We knew that only a few stunts on the streets wouldn’t be enough for a city the size of São Paulo. We needed to maximize the repercussion and make sure we made the subject interesting enough so everyone felt interested to talk about it.

We estimate that we had nearly 50 million impressions in the media including websites, blogs, newspapers and TV. In social media, just one facebook post had over 1200 likes.

The repercussion brought to Rede Papel Bituca a clear recognition as a company that is working hard to fight against this problem. A lot of companies got in touch, interested in supporting our projects, like festivals, councils and even private companies.

The results were above the expectations but in a city the size of São Paulo, we think it’s just the start.

First we did our stunt in 5 to 7 different locations per day for a couple of weeks. We always made sure we covered different areas, with a different range of people.

With all that being filmed we had enough material to create a video that we’d use to spread the message. We could already feel how everyone was more involved and interested in the subject.

The original plan was just to shoot it and then send the video to media channels, but because visually the big butts spread in the city was so interesting we decided to change our plans and negotiated with the most relevant TV channels an exclusive coverage on one of the days we did our stunt. The invite was very well accepted and we had a couple of TV channels covering it and featuring it in the news.

These results meant that Rede Papel Bituca was now recognised as a serious organization working hard to fight this problem. A lot of other organisations got in touch interested in supporting the project, from festivals, to councils, even private companies. With these sponsors on board we were able to install many more butt disposal bins, and support other social projects. One such project gave kids with mental disabilities the chance to produce stationery using paper recycled from the butts themselves. As a nonprofit organization our budget was very limited, but the results were above all expectations.