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- Cigarette butt litter is the world’s greatest environmental litter problem
- Globally approximately 5.2 trillion cigarettes are manufactured every year. In developed countries (or in markets where indoor smoking bans have been introduced) almost 1 in 3 cigarette butts end up as litter.
- In most Western countries, cigarette butt litter accounts for around 50% of all litter.
- Cigarette butt litter dramatically increases where indoor smoking bans are implemented.
- In Australia, NSW smokers throw away enough butts to fill 7 Olympic swimming pools. Up to 350,000 butts end up in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria and waterways every day.
- It can take up to 12 years for a cigarette butt to break down.
- Cigarette butts can leach chemicals such as cadmium, lead and arsenic into our marine environment within an hour of contact with water.
- Cigarette butts have been found in the stomachs of fish, whales, birds and other marine animals which leads to ingestion of hazardous chemicals and digestive blockages.
- Smokers in many countries can be fined for flicking a lit cigarette.And the final and most important thing to know about cigarette butt litter is: Only smokers can stop cigarette butt litter. We need to educate them that butts are litter, and provide a positive alternative to littering.
Got over to Ecolad and check out what you can do to help.
Thanks, Bill![tags] smoking, cigarette, butt, litter, environment [/tags]
The idiot who wrote this article has his head up his butt.
Really.. There are so many self righteous people responding… The hypocrisy behind the environment argument … I bet half of you don’t even recycle.. Or even bother turning appliances off at the wall when not in use. The question is… not whether nature will survive but whether we will survive nature.
We all have our flaws, some more evident than others. We are creatures of habit. I smoke and I agree it’s disgusting. What I find more disgusting is the way non smokers talk about giving up a habit. I have been addicted to numerous substances in the past including heroin and codeine. I have found that nicotine is more addictive than opiates. Rubbishing smoker’s doest help.. Offering love and compassion does.
What the seasons change in a lifetime…..
Just my 2 cents
I guess their putting in stupidity in tobacco too. What me hurting the environment, others never, you make this all up.
Please smoke more, and faster we can use a few less of you, but please pick up after yourselves a little respect for the rest of us.
First of all, I have to say that this is all just a bunch of crap. None of those facts seem researched to me, and with no sources to back them up I can basically just write off this entire article. As for those that posted anti-smoker comments, you’re all a bunch of uneducated retards. I mean honestly, ‘I hate smokers because I heard it’s bad from the government’ is just wrong. You know what’s more dangerous than smoking? Pretty much everything. Specifically so, obesity is FAR more hazardous to your health than smoking ever could me. Does that give me the right to go around criticizing fat people for being unhealthy? NO! They can do whatever they want, just like smokers can.
Personally, I used to smoke, and have since quit. Cigarette butts ARE a littering problem, as they are everywhere, however as pointed out, developed countries are passing laws to make this problem worse, not better. Banning indoor smoking is a joke. If a bar wants to allow smoking, let them. A non-smoker doesn’t have to go there, and everyone that’s ever opened a bar has had the option to disallow smoking in their establishment. Being that smoking is the least of the problems in the westernized world, you’d think they’d focus on banning trans-fats in foods, controlling what’s sold through low-end fast food restaurants, and other actual health issues instead of cracking down on smoking, a complete NON-ISSUE. Those that take up arms against smokers are typically uneducated people that prefer to harp on whoever they’re told to dislike, rather than making a decision for themselves.
Everybody has knowleage: Haven’t seen to much knowleage change things in peoples
lives.But knowleage could help for your stability of your lives. But not the solutions. It holds true, anything that you abuse is bad for you ….
we all want to have some value wheather its, knowleage, or second chance . As far as that goes. I have a washing machaine to do my laundy.”"”"”"”"”
“Smoking is a separate issue. If we banned everything that causes litter, we must ban fast food, alcohol, snacks, drinks, gum, political campaigns, public transportation, grocery bags, packaged food, envelopes, ATMs, and many other things that are not the cause of littering.”
We should just cancel humanity. We’ve failed. No, not at being religious. Being religious is a symptom of the failure.
That was only 9 facts, tard.
“Last election, when a smoking regulation was on the ballot here (Nevada), there was alot of moaning from smokers about their “rights” to smoke.”
You see my pet peeve is litter. The problem with cigarette butt litter is litter, not smoking. If you smoke or do not smoke you should not litter.
Smoking is a separate issue. If we banned everything that causes litter, we must ban fast food, alcohol, snacks, drinks, gum, political campaigns, public transportation, grocery bags, packaged food, envelopes, ATMs, and many other things that are not the cause of littering.
Put your trash in a trash can. It really doesn’t matter what the trash is, just put it in the trash can, recycle bin or whatever the appropriate place is.
Not so much hate. Just a pet peeve. and some exaggeration.
:p Last election, when a smoking regulation was on the ballot here (Nevada), there was alot of moaning from smokers about their “rights” to smoke. No one seemed to consider a person’s right to not smoke. As though the right to smoke was stronger than the right to breathe smoke-free air. I happen to feel it is the other way around.
Let them smoke in their homes and cars.
better yet, round them up. We can have smoker’s camps out in the middle of the desert somewhere.
oops, there’s that exaggeration thing again.
Nitpicker:
Why so much hate?
Are you a member of the Westboro Baptist church?
Hey!
I wanted to read about *TEN* things I should know about butt litter. Why did you stop with nine?
I hate cigarettes, and I dislike the smokers. Personally I feel that every butt smokers toss away should be forced back on them as a suppository, still lit!
They litter the beaches, the parks, everywhere!
Maybe if we could make the butts edible, we could solve this whole problem. If cigarette smoke taste as good as it smells, we should make the butts dung-flavored so the smokers will enjoy them. And add another kick of edible nicotine to the butts so the smoker will want to eat their own butts.
It would almost be poetic!
Did you know 78% of statistics are made up?
Most of that is rubbish :)
If I could smoke inside with an ashtray, even in a small smoking room, there would be less of a problem no?
I wish all the smokers all the best for making their life shorter, and would urge them to smoke in lonely corners where no living thing is around, so as not to hurt them…
I just wish smokers knew how badly they REEEEEK and just how stupid they look slowly killing themselves.
If anyone dares to have these bumperstickers on your car, please use my quotes~
DROP YOUR CHERRY, NOT YOUR BUTT!
SAVE MONEY ON CIGARETTES, ROLL UP YOUR WINDOWS!
Butt turns to compost (in a compost) within two years according to my own tests. This 12 years is nonsense, really is. In the forest, it is best to slash or tear the butt open. This way, it wont be eaten by animals and it will break down earlier. Do not throw them to water, as they float and will be eaten by a fish or a bird. The biggest butt-problem in the city is the clogging of the sewage system. Those butts are remarkable dam material (beavers should take a note). And btw, I smoke and I still hate the butts and the smell of an ashtray.
Anyways, the butt of the problem is not the butt in this case. Its the tobacco. Cultivating tobacco ravages the soil it is grown within five years, and farmers have to move to another area. This area is mostly gained by burning down the rainforest. Growing tobacco is way easy, it grows like a weed and is very profitable, so there is no way a used-to-be-starving family would go back just cause we dont want them to burn the forest. Then the tobacco is shipped to your local vendor through our fragile enviroment using non-renewable soon-to-be-extinct fuels, just a quick stop at the brands factory to add some additives.
So while you have a puff, you are killing yourself, the planet, putting your money to the healthcare to take care of your addicted and to-be-dead-ten-years-too-early body, you also support the legalized druglords and the tobacco farmers most-likely-gun-wielding dictator boss. Then again, there is a nice feeling while puffin that you support a family
i know butts do impact the environment but then again so do cars. cars do more damage to the environment than anything smokers can do.
besides, when it comes to cigarettes, the smoke released from all the smokers in the world is a bigger problem than the butts.
overall, people need to see that we are ALL destroying our environment and we will ALL pay the consequences if we ALL don’t do something about it.
Are you trying to convince some brain-dead audience that cigarettes are more hazardous environmental problem than nuclear waste? Than CO2 build-up? Than plastic waste which takes DECADES to degrade? For shame. Do your frippin’ research and site your damn sources!
Sources?
Litter sucks. However you seem to be exaggerating. A reliable source or two would help.
I think we need to get people to stop littering in general.