Cigarette butts cause more damage than plastic straws

While there is an increasing and necessary focus on the negative impact of single-use plastics, like shopping bags and plastic straws, on the environment, there is evidence that cigarette butts are also major pollutants.

These butts have been described as the ‘worst contaminant of our oceans’ in a study which claims that they cause even more damage than plastic straws. Thomas Novotny

According to Thomas Novotny, professor of public health at San Diego State University, ‘It’s pretty clear there is no health benefit from filters. They are just a marketing tool. And they make it easier for people to smoke. It’s also a major contaminant, with all that plastic waste. It seems like a no-brainer to me that we can’t continue to allow this.’ San Francisco

Although not the ultimate solution, San Francisco charges a fee of 60 cents per pack of cigarettes sold and uses the money raised to pay for cleaning up litter. Novotny has also founded a campaign known as The Cigarette Butt Pollution Project to try and address the problem of cigarette butt pollution.

Belgium In another awareness campaign, a big clean-up was organised across Belgium by citizens’ collective group ‘Leo Not Happy’ last year to coincide with the country’s 10th annual National Day of Cleanliness.

A group of 220 volunteers collected 270,000 cigarette butts in three hours in Brussels, while 60 volunteers collected 24,000 butts in Namur in the same period.

Along with images posted to Facebook, Leo Not Happy wrote, ‘A cigarette butt is a non-biodegradable trash, the sewers in our cities are no ashtrays. One cigarette butt pollutes 500 litres of water. Dear smokers, please adopt the habit to use pocket ashtrays or throw your extinguished cigarette in a litter bin.’