HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS!
Cigarette butts are THE most littered item in the entire world. Not only that, and I recently realized this, they are the most littered PLASTIC item in the world. Though, they are commonly used, they are the one item that often gets littered on purpose, and nobody turns a second eye. I’m not a smoker and I don’t really know where throwing your butts down on the ground after you’re done originally came from. Is it perhaps people think that cigarette butts are biodegradable? According to my research, they are far from being biodegradable.
The filters in cigarettes are made out of plastic fibers called cellulose acetate and can take up to a decade to degrade. Though they may take much less time than water bottles (~450 years) to break down, their sheer numbers of being littered outweigh any hope of fast decomposition. So don’t bank on that! According to the CDC, an estimated 14 of every 100 Americans aged 18 or older are smokers. That’s about 34.3 million people, who may smoke up to 10 cigarettes per day on average. If all American smokers smoke 10 a day and regularly dump their butts on the ground (or into the ocean if they’re on a vessel), that’s a whopping 3,430,000,000 butts littered each day!
Once dumped on the ground, cigarette butts could easily be carried away by rainwater and into storm drains, rivers, lakes, and oceans. Once underwater, they can leach out chemicals that can be toxic to fish and other aquatic or marine wildlife. During my beach cleanups, they are certainly a very commonly found item, and unfortunately, shorebirds mistake cigarette butts for food. Along with other plastic item pieces they are consuming, cigarette butts result in blockages within birds’ gastrointestinal tracts. Shorebirds will definitely feel full, but they will not absorb the nutrients they need to stay healthy and survive. Many of them end up dying. Because plastic litter is now tremendously prevalent in our coastal and marine environments and if we don’t start cleaning up our act, 99% of all shorebirds will have traces of plastic in their gut by 2050.
Litter is litter and should not be acceptable anywhere. I’m asking everyone who smokes to please stop throwing your butts on the ground and instead toss them into a garbage receptacle. If a receptacle is not readily accessible, then you can try to carry around a napkin or small bag to place your butts in after use. If that’s not possible, try going filter-less or rolling your own. Then that way, cigarettes can be biodegradable depending on what you use. If you are trying to quit, perhaps this environmental problem is another good reason to do so. Nonetheless, please remember… HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS!
