Cigarettes Environmental Impact
July 10, 2010 | 99 Reasons To Stop, Chemicals in Cigarettes, Facts About Smoking
We’re all very familiar with the impact that smoking cigarettes and tobacco has on our personal health.
It’s even well documented now the effect that passive smoking can have on the people around us, with measures being taken in more and more countries to stop smoking in public places.
One element about smoking that is less well publicized is the impact that smoking and the chemicals and filters are having on our environment and the damage that they’re doing to our wildlife and waters.
It’s all about the Butt.
Cigarette butts are made up of cellulose acetate, which is a form of plastic. They pose as big a threat to the environment as other forms of plastic and people rarely realise just how environmentally unfriendly the simple cigarette butt is.
The truth about cigarette butt litter can be alarming.
The biggest myth is that cigarette filters are biodegradable. This is completely wrong. Cigarette butts are not biodegradable in the sense that most people think of the word. The acetate (plastic) filters can take an obscene number of years to decompose.
Many smokers don’t even realize that their actions have such a lasting, negative impact on the environment.
Cigarette butts also present a threat to wildlife and have been found in the stomachs of:
- Fish
- Birds
- Whales
- Other marine creatures
These innocent creatures had mistaken the toxic filters for food.
Over time, cigarette companies have taken great pains to keep their customers in the dark on this issue. It is very common for highly littered items such as soda cans, snack wrappers, and fast food containers to have a simple “Please Don’t Litter” message.
There’s no such message on cigarette packs.
Cigarette smokers need to become more aware and therefore more responsible in their methods of disposing of these environmental hazards .
Some countries are beginning to encourage this by introducing a heavy fine for smokers who litter with their cigarette butts in the street.
Smoking and littering do not have to be synonymous, as many smokers are not bad people and just don’t understand the negative impact that every thoughtlessly discarded cigarette butt and tobacco filter is having.
But it’s not just about the severe lack of biodegradability of a filter or butt. The filters themselves are designed to capture some of the 4,000 highly toxic chemicals that are present in each cigarette.
What happens after that butt gets casually flicked onto the street, stubbed out on a nature trail, or abandoned on a beach?
Typically wind and rain carry the discarded cigarette into the water supply, there the toxic chemicals that the cigarette filter was designed to trap, start to leak out into our rivers, streams and aquatic ecosystems.
With these harmful substances causing damage to many aquatic life forms and even threatening the quality of the water.
Cigarette butts may seem small and perhaps even insignificant at first, but when you realise that there are several trillion butts littered every year, the impact of these toxic chemicals soon add up!
So what’s the best way to tackle this serious environmental problem?
Of course I’m going to suggest stop smoking!
But if you’re not quite ready to quit yet, if each and every one of us simply takes responsibility for our own litter, including cigarette butts, then our individual environmental impact will pose less of a threat in the ways discussed above.
No Ifs, no Butts, think carefully before you flick that butt.
