This is a personal pet-peeve.
I HATE it when I’m driving along on the highway and suddenly there’s a tiny orange flash on the road ahead – someone has chucked a cigarette butt out their window. For some reason these people don’t think they’re littering.
NEWSFLASH: Hey smokers!! Cigarette butts are NOT biodegradable! When you toss them out your window or on the sidewalk, make no mistake – you are trashing the planet.
Photo from www.kab.org
How bad is the problem? The American Legacy Foundation says that “in the past decade, cigarette smoking in America has decreased 28%, yet cigarette butts remain the most littered item–in the U.S. and across the globe.”
A fairly recent New York Times story said, “Nationally, cigarette butts account for one-quarter or more of the items tossed onto streets and other roadways.” The article goes on to point out that cigarette butts “contain plastic filters that enter sewers and storm drains, and get swept into rivers and then out to sea, where they can release toxic chemicals including nicotine, benzene and cadmium.”
A Virginia-based anti-butt effort reports that “about 95% of cigarette filters are composed of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic which does not quickly degrade and can persist in the environment.”
With characteristic irony, apparently even cigarette companies agree this is a problem. Pollution prevention programs that get funding from Phillip Morris, including the Keep America Beautiful program, say that only 10% of cigarette butts are properly deposited in ash receptacles, they constitute 28-33% of all litter nationwide, and account for 28% of littered items washing up on the world’s beaches.
In the past, reporters have had the discouraging habit of telling their audiences how big and bad a problem is, without telling them what they can do to help. So it’s heartening to relate Keep America Beautiful’s claim that its Cigarette Litter Prevention Program resulted in an average 55% reduction in cigarette butt litter in the areas where it was field tested.
Here’s a link to where you can learn more if you want to help. The bottom line is, if you’re going to smoke, put your butts in an ash receptacle or trash can.
At the heart of the issue, in my opinion, is a careless mentality that needs to change. I try not to pass judgment against those who choose to smoke despite the health risks, but the evidence is pretty compelling that all this butt chucking seems to spring from a general lack of regard for the personal and potentially global consequences of one’s actions.
This might be one of the strongest opinions I’ve ever posted here, but it seems to me that with all of the much harder environmentally hazardous habits our global society must break, this is an easy behavior to change right away.
Just wait a week…