Japanese man helps clear 4,500 cigarette butts littered by smokers in Putrajaya

PETALING JAYA, May 29 — A Japanese man helped pick up a shocking 4,500 cigarette butts from the streets of Putrajaya during a clean-up run earlier this year.

The man, known as Nana, posted a photo to Twitter on Tuesday displaying the mountain of rubbish he managed to pick up at the Ayer@8 area in Putrajaya within one and a half hours.

“So many cigarette butts littered everywhere,” he wrote in Japanese along with a crying emoji.

He then wrote a follow-up tweet in Malay explaining that he picked up the trash during a clean-up run with environmentalist group Trash Hero Putrajaya a few months ago.

According to a pinned tweet on his profile, Nana currently resides in Cyberjaya and likes to volunteer for various charity initiatives.

When he’s not busy lending a hand to Mother Nature, Nana spends his time learning the local language and often tweets in a combination of his mother tongue and Malay.

One Twitter user replied to Nana saying that Malaysians still have a long way to go when it comes to being mindful of disposing of their litter properly.

“I think the problem is that people think it’s okay to litter since their rubbish will be picked up by cleaners anyway.

“We need to instill the mindset of ‘I have to throw away my own rubbish’ from a young age,” said the user.

In a separate Twitter thread, Nana shared another photo showing a heap of plastic bottles he and his fellow volunteers picked up near Gem In Mall at Cyberjaya back in February.

“On February 29 before the movement control order, I did a clean-up near the Gem In Mall with volunteers from Trash Hero Putrajaya.

“We picked up 202 kilogrammes of rubbish including bottles, cigarette butts, and more,” he wrote.