Stop using world as cigarette butt-can
We’re anti-smoking — not anti-smokers — because smoking harms health, and cancer doesn’t need any help in destroying lives.
What is it about smokers that leads them to believe they can dump cigarette butts anywhere they want?
But this editorial isn’t going to exhort you to quit smoking. We’d hope your physician is already on the case.
Our aim here is simple: We’d like to urge smokers to stop leaving cigarette butts everywhere. They are gross. And they are litter, though it seems some people seem to think cigarette butts are in some special category that makes it acceptable to drop them on city streets, suburban sidewalks, parks, beaches, anywhere people stroll.
It’s not acceptable. And yet people who never would hurl a plastic cup or fast food wrapper out of a car window feel perfectly fine about flinging their cigarette butts onto the street.
That’s why we are pleased that smoking will be prohibited on New Jersey beaches. It’s true that some of those beaches are littered with more than cigarette butts. But if this reduces the volume of cigarette waste, that will be a good thing.
We’re with Brian Wilson (presumably not the Beach Boy), of Elizabethtown, whose March 1, 2017, letter to the editor consisted of a one-line plea: “Please stop using the world as your cigarette-butt can.”
For one thing, cigarette butts are harmful to marine life.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Response and Restoration, most cigarette filters “are made of a type of plastic, cellulose acetate, which doesn’t biodegrade and can persist in the environment for a long time.
Fish, birds, and other animals can mistake small pieces of plastic, like cigarette butts, for food. Eating them could cause the animal to choke or starve to death because the plastic isn’t digested, filling up their stomachs.”
Moreover, the NOAA said, cigarette butts “contain toxins (such as heavy metals and the organic compounds nicotine and ethylphenol).”
And while “not a lot is known about how those toxins impact the environment, wildlife and humans,” studies show “they have a negative health impact on fish.”
Over the past 25 years, volunteers taking part in the International Coastal Cleanup, an annual event held by the Ocean Conservancy, have collected 52.9 million cigarette butts.
And cigarette butts can sicken — and even kill — pet dogs and cats as well as wildlife, including birds.
In 2015, LNP staff writer Ad Crable noted that before the plastic in cigarettes breaks down — which takes an interminable amount of time — the butt ends, or filters, can be carried into streams. “Some 32 percent of litter that clogs storm drains is tobacco products,” he reported.
Crable cited a study by Keep America Beautiful that found that 65 percent of all cigarette butts are disposed of improperly.
Frankly, given the ubiquity of cigarette butts littering our public spaces, we’re surprised the percentage isn’t higher.
Crable was reporting on an experimental effort involving Turkey Hill Minit Markets, Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. and national recycling company TerraCycle to turn cigarette butts into plastic pallets and compost.
As part of that effort, cigarette butt recycling receptacles were placed outside most of Turkey Hill’s Pennsylvania stores. In some of the stores, sealable cigarette butt pouches were placed at the cash registers for customers to take home and fill up before returning them to the recycling receptacle outside the store.
Turkey Hill Minit Markets provided post-paid recycling waste pouches to send the butts through the mail directly to TerraCycle, the company doing the recycling.
It was a noble effort, but it didn’t go far. Still, these are the kinds of initiatives — and we need plenty of them — needed to make a dent in the problem of cigarette waste.
In the meantime, we have a simple request to make of those of you who smoke: Please don’t toss cigarette butts just everywhere. To echo Brian Wilson’s succinct message: Please stop using the world as your cigarette-butt can.