Cigarette Butts – The Scourge of Society and the Environment

There are few things as vile and disgusting as discarded cigarette butts.

Loaded with toxins, trillions (yes trillions) of cigarette butts are discarded each and every year worldwide.  What’s worse is that only a small minority of them wind up initially in a proper waste disposal unit like an ashtray or a public butt receptacle.  Too often smokers choose to simply throw them onto the ground, toss them out of windows and basically show little concern for the fact that they are both littering (a public offence) and causing damage to our environment.

According to Gina Jacob of San Diego State University, who prepared a report entitled “Cigarette Butts Toxic to Marine Life” 1 cigarette butt can contaminate 1 litre of water.  Multiply that by the number of discarded butts every year and you see the potential scale of the problem.

The solution to the scourge of cigarette butts ultimately rests with both the attitudes and practices of smokers to treat their hazardous waste more responsibly, as well as municipalities and businesses to provide more appropriate disposal options.  This is a long-term solution for as anyone can tell you, attitudes are amongst the hardest elements of an individual to change.

Thankfully though, in the meantime there are unique initiatives taking place to at least remove the amount of cigarette butts littering streets, parks and many other public places.  One such initiative, which is happening on the first weekend in May across Canada is called Butt Blitz and is being organized by the environmental advocacy group A Greener Future.

According to it’s Executive Director Rochelle Archibald, on Saturday, May 5th volunteers from across Canada are gathering together to collect discarded cigarette butts in an effort to remove them from our public spaces and our ecosystem.  Butts are collected and then brought to assigned community coordinators for collection, and then the butts will all be sent to TerraCycle, an environmental upcycling company.

TerraCycle apparently has a multi-step recycling process whereby butts are first sterilized, then shredded followed by separating tobacco from paper.  The tobacco is composted with non-food items and the paper is blended with other recycled material and then pelletized to be used for injection moulding or extrusion.

For every pound of cigarette waste collected and shipped to TerraCycle, $1 will be donated to A Greener Future.

While this certainly doesn’t address the root of the problems around cigarette waste, it certainly is a positive initiative and one I’m happy to promote.

If you want to learn more about this initiative or about A Greener Future in general, please visit their website at www.agreenerfuture.ca.

 

Eric Novak

About Eric Novak

Eric Novak is a father of 4 who also thinks that environmental stewardship is a requisite of parenting. He's not a professional Dad nor is he an environmental scientist, but he's someone who gives a damn and is trying to make the right decisions as he lives his life as a father, environmentalist, part time professor and business owner. Eric has 4 children and resides in Ajax, Ontario.