Artist, Álvaro Guzmán, has designed a new art piece that calls attention to cigarette litter and is titled “Recoges lo que siembras” (you reap what you sow.)
Thousands of cigarette butts were collected from Arrecife, La Santa and La Graciosa by volunteers to create the cigarette vine sculpture – with the aim to promote mindfulness and spread awareness about littering.
The new sculpture has been installed next to the new Open Mall shopping centre in Arrecife.
The sign next to the piece reads:
Cigarette Vine
This artwork is made up of 5,362 cigarette butts out of 11,000 collected from the ground by volunteers in Arrecife, La Santa and La Graciosa.
Three out of every four cigarette butts end up littering our natural environment. If a smoker consumes an average of one pack of cigarettes per day, 15 cigarette butts end up on the ground. That makes a total of 5,475 cigarette butts per person per year. That is more than what you have in front of you.
Cigarette butts contain chemicals that highly pollutes out land and water. Our home is also what is outside our houses. Sadly we have normalised habits like this one.
We have taken this grape vine as an identifying symbol of Lanzarote and its agricultural tradition, its focus to create awareness and promote a change towards a more respectful behaviour and consciousness.
We are ecodependent of the environment that surrounds us. Is this what we give back in return?
The Lanzarote Biosphere Reserve needs your collaboration to preserve the harmony between human beings and nature.
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