Cigarette butts are among the most collected items at beach cleanups and are the leading form of litter found worldwide. An estimated 6 trillion cigarettes are smoked annually, and 4.5 trillion becomes litter.
The Surfrider Foundation’s Hold on to Your Butt program aims to end cigarette butt pollution one butt at a time through action and education. Butt cleanups help compile data on the number of butts polluting our communities and prevents those butts from contaminating our environment even more.
It’s more than just unsightly trash and litter on our beaches and in the oceans. Cigarette butt litter in parking lots, along sidewalks, and in street gutters often end up in storm drains from wind, rain, or intentional action by people who sweep or throw butts into drains. Once in a storm drain, butts travel through the waterway into streams, rivers, and to the ocean.
Those cigarette butts stay around so long because they are made of plastic and do not biodegrade. Instead, they slowly break down into smaller, and smaller pieces. After two years, a cigarette butt is only 38% decomposed. Cigarette butts are composed of tobacco remnants, a filter, and a paper coating. The filters are made of compressed, plasticized cellulose acetate and retain many toxic chemicals produced by the combustion of tobacco. The tobacco remnants biodegrade but can still be toxic to waterways and ecosystems, and any bird or mammal that ingests it.
The toxic chemicals in cigarette butts leach out and compromise the quality of the water and any creatures that live in or around it. Plastic cigarette filters have been found in the stomachs of fish, birds, whales, and other marine creatures that mistake them as food, swallowing both the harmful plastic and associated toxic chemicals.
The next time you are in a public area such as a parking lot, look at the ground around you. Once you notice cigarette butts on the ground, you can’t unsee it. But you can do something about it; support the Surfrider Foundation and get involved in a Hold Onto Your Butt cleanup!
You can find Grays Harbor Surfrider events to get involved with at our event page.
More information on cigarette butt pollution can be found at Beachapedia.