Talkin' trash. No ifs, ands ... just butts

John Gillette maintains 58 cigarette butt receptacles in the Pearl District

Cigarettes are the most littered item in the world, with an estimated 4.5 trillion littered annually. The filters are essentially plastic and each butt can take 5 to 400 years to break down. Photos by Walden Kirsch

John Gillette visits and maintains 58 cigarette butt receptacles (CBRs) spread out along the streets of the Pearl. The enclosures he tirelessly monitors are like vertical ashtrays affixed to parking signage with metal bands.

Mindful smokers can drop their spent cigarettes here through a slot in the side, or sometimes drop them down a hole on the top. Less aware smokers flick their butts into gutters and storm drains that lead to the river.

Noticed or not by smokers, the humble receptacles haven’t always been here.

Pearl community leaders Judie Dunken and Dave Mitchell sparked the campaign a decade ago.

“I was appalled at the huge number of cigarette butts on the streets, sidewalks and gutters. Picking them up one by one wasn’t efficient,” Mitchell said. “We collected thousands of butts with our handheld trash pickers, which was extremely tedious, to say the least.”

So Mitchell worked for months with Make America Beautiful and TerraCycle, which makes the receptacles and recycles the butts, to put together a plan to install nearly 100 bins throughout the Pearl District. He embarked on a journey through a maze of city bureaus, and after 18 months PBOT finally approved his installation plan. The PDNA’s Clean Team officially launched the cigarette butt recycling program in 2016.

John Gillette has been along every step of the way.

This is what committed looks like. Retired psychiatrist John Gillette empties a cigarette receptacle on NW 11th and Northrup streets in the Pearl District. He averages three miles a day on his walks.

Gillette, a retired psychiatrist, shares a map of the Pearl District with three quadrants circled in black ink and the number of receptacles within each: North (20) Central (19) and South (17). “I have a partner for each zone, and once a month we visit them, empty them and count them,” he said. The butts are then bagged in plastic and dropped into corner garbage cans.

After he makes his rounds, Gillette creates a monthly report with a total count and sends it to the PDNA’s Livability and Safety Committee. This count is distinct from the number of butts picked up with grabbers by volunteers on separate cleanups.

The 12-month total of cigarette butts rounded up by Clean Teams and Foot Patrol in 2025 was 48,532. The total gleaned from receptacles in the same year was 34,005. The six-year combined total is 600,336.

Gillette said the Pearl is still the only Portland neighborhood with such receptacles but sections of District 4 are considering installing them.

He has been walking this beat for about seven years. Let’s just pause for a second and consider how the cadre of volunteers at PDNA are quietly making things better around here.

While today’s cigarette butts (placed in the canisters) are not recycled, they are collected and disposed of into landfills keeping the away from rivers and wildlife.

Asked if he was obsessed with his task, he said, “not obsessed. I would say committed.”

Chris Mackovjak, a neighborhood realtor and co-chair of the Clean Team/Foot Patrol Committee, often accompanies Gillette on his rounds.

The arduous practice of mailing the butts to TerraCycle for recycling ended four years ago when UPS stopped handling tobacco products of any kind, Gillette said. So while today’s cigarette butts (placed in the canisters) are no longer recycled, they are at least collected and disposed of into landfills, keeping them mostly away from rivers and wildlife.

Gillette empties the receptacles into a plastic bag opening the bottom with a T-shaped key. Sometimes, and sometimes often, desperate people dismantle the receptacles. About one receptacle a month is stolen, and about a third are opened by force. Receptacles at Northwest 14^th and Raleigh, Jamison Square and around Safeway get the heaviest use, he said.

The receptacles cost $110 each, and 12 more are on order. The new models will have angled slots to prevent rain from entering. Using his hands to describing the different components of the receptacles, Gillette said he’d prefer to simply replace the lock mechanism but the design and angle of the fastener prohibits it.

You love what you care for. Gillette is out with different clean teams four days a week. He also manages two poker teams. His wife, a fabric artist, patched his jeans using Shashiko, a Japanese embroidery and mending technique that uses a visible running stitch.

In addition to emptying the ashtrays all around the Pearl, Gillette leads two different weekly cleanups with other volunteers. Since the arrival of “the tricycle guys,” he and his crews can reduce their routes to twice a month.

The tricycle guys, in case you need reminding, are Portland Solutions’ mobile cleaning units. The colorful three-wheelers are part of the enhanced services the Pearl District received after the Northrup Shelter opened. Focused on trash and biohazards, they do not clean up cigarette butts.