"5 billion cigarette butts" in the Maritime Museum Piran

From 25 October to 3 December 2023, the exhibition prepared by the SMETUMET cultural and ecological society under the title "5 billion cigarette butts" was on display at the Monfort Infocenter.

Its intention was to accentuate the problem of waste through the eyes of creative people in a humorous, purely concrete, as well as conceptual way. Specifically, a great proportion of cigarette butts end up on the coasts and in the sea itself each year, and as the latter acts as a huge mixer, the butts become very problematic owing to the huge poison and plastic content, as “plastically” presented at the exhibition.

 

The first part of the exhibition also showed some imaginative solutions to the problem, such as portable ashtrays made of recycled materials, the ban on smoking on beaches (which has already been accepted in some countries) and the engagement of crows in butt picking. On the grounds of the aforementioned topics, the students of the Secondary Preschool Education, Grammar School and Art Gymnasium Ljubljana (SVŠGUGL) made an educational, entertaining video and an interview.

 

In the second part of the exhibition, several works of art made of waste were presented. These were made by eight creative people - some also in the sense of design products of the circular economy: comics, installations, acrylic on plastic, a sweater made of waste materials, a snack and the like. The exhibition also hints at the broader issue of the attitude towards used materials, which is a mirror of every society and part of which also ends up in museums.

 

The exhibition had a much-talked-about opening with the narration of various stories dealing with waste as well as a good response from the public, and ended on This Happy Day of Culture with guided tours. Pupils from two local schools also helped in solving the environmental problems: the Portorož Communication, Hearing and Speech Center and the Ciril Kosmač Primary School Piran (together with the Portorož branch), which participated in guided conversations while visiting the exhibition and the workshop, which stimulated them to think more deeply about the problems and how to solve them.

 

For those who missed the exhibition, the Maritime Museum produced a video of photos and exhibition contents as part of the Forward Into the Past online campaign and published it on the YouTube channel - you are kindly invited to visit it