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HWN Suggests

Cigarette Littering: Another Unhealthy Habit

No-one likes a hypocrite, not even hypocrites. So if you're a smoker behaving badly, stop. And if you're a nonsmoker, next time you see one of your smoker friends engage in this little bit of littering, ask her whether she throws her other trash on the ground. When she says she doesn't, ask her how this is different. Even she'll see she doesn't have a good answer. And maybe that will help cut into this toxic clutter that we're so accustomed to.

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  How to Stop Cigarette Butt Litter

In many places around the world, littering is usually accidental, with one glaring exception: cigarette butts. Maybe we need to add a little secret sauce to anti-littering campaigns.

 Find Out Why This Teen Collected Over 64,000 Cigarette Butts

Secondhand smoke isn’t the only way cigarettes affect non-smokers. Approximately 1.69 billion pounds of butts end up as toxic trash, making them the most littered item on Earth. Cigarette filters are made from cellulose acetate, a plastic which is technically biodegradable. However, cigarette butts only degrade under severe biological circumstances, such as when filters end up in sewage. Even under optimal conditions, it can take at least nine months for a butt to degrade. “They just stay there, and they get in our water and it’s just bad for the environment,” Kaune says.

 In Graphic Detail: Cigarette Butt Research Is Lighting Up

As the world’s beaches and oceans have become one giant ashtray, research has accelerated on what many are calling a global crisis.

Articles of Interest

A Campaign Fights the Cigarette Butt, a Ubiquitous Pollutant

“We have to change societal norms in terms of littered cigarette butts,” said Cheryl G. Healton, the chief executive of Legacy, which is based in Washington, and was created by the 1998 master settlement agreement between states and the tobacco industry. “I see people throwing cigarette butts out their car windows all the time, but I don’t see people throwing cans out their windows.”

Big Tobacco is killing the planet with plastics. No smokescreen should be allowed to hide that

Greenwashing ploys cannot mask the pollution wreaked both by cigarettes and new nicotine products.

Cigarette butts are the forgotten plastic pollution – and they could be killing our plants

It’s amazing how quickly people have ditched plastic straws thanks to campaigns to discourage us from using such “pointless plastic”. Yet rarely do we hear about a much more common source of plastic pollution. Cigarette butts or filters are the most littered item on the planet. An estimated 5.6 trillion cigarettes are smoked each year, out of which two thirds are improperly disposed of. That’s [4.5 trillion butts] each year. Since the 1980s, cigarette butts have accounted for 30% to 40% of all litter found in coastal and urban litter clean-ups.

Cigarette butts are toxic plastic pollution. Should they be banned?

Trillions of cigarette butts are thrown into the environment every year, where they leach nicotine and heavy metals before turning into microplastic pollution.

Cigarette Butts Are Toxic Waste

Here’s a fact that isn’t as well-known: Cigarettes are also the number one littered item on U.S. roadways and on beaches and in waterways worldwide.

Cigarette Butts Could Help Power Future Devices

South Korean researchers have found a simple way to turn toxic trash into high-performance supercapacitors.

Cigarette butts: how the no 1 most littered objects are choking our coasts

An estimated 4.5tn tobacco filters are littered each year and many end up in oceans with deadly consequences.

Cigarette Butts: Tiny Trash That Piles Up

Cigarette companies acknowledge the problem. The Cigarette Litter Prevention Program, created by the nonprofit group Keep America Beautiful, is financed by Philip Morris, the cigarette giant. The prevention program’s statistics show that butts constitute 28 percent to 33 percent of all litter nationwide — measured by item number, not volume.

Cigarette Butts: Toxic Plastic Pollution from Cradle to Grave

Cigarette butts are a persistent form of toxic plastic pollution. Littered in the environment they do not biodegrade. Instead, they slowly leak a chemical cocktail of highly toxic and carcinogenic substances into soils, waterways, lakes, and the oceans. In that way, the afterlife of cigarettes further adds to the havoc they already cause during their production and consumption.

Cigarette Waste: New Solutions for the World’s Most-littered Trash

A range of new tactics aim to curb cigarette butt pollution, including groundbreaking legislation that could hold tobacco companies accountable for their products’ waste.

Don't be a butthead; dispose of cigarettes properly

The vast majority — 90 percent — of cigarette butts are not disposed of properly, Keep America Beautiful reports. That means 4.5 trillion — yes, trillion — of these butts are littered each year, according to National Geographic(Opens in a new window). And cigarette butts are a double whammy in the world of litter because they take years to break down and they contain harmful chemicals that leach into the environment.

From Butts To Bricks, This Is The Plan To Recycle Cigarettes Into Construction Materials

Cigarette butts top the list of most littered items in the world, clocking in at 6.5 trillion discarded each year. That breaks down to about 18 billion cigarette butts flicked onto the sidewalks and streets, and into the sands of beaches every day. But beyond just being unsightly litter, the plastic filters are also environmental hazards. They’re made from a material called cellulose acetate, which can take up to a decade to decompose. Plus, cigarettes are full of toxic chemical agents that research suggests hampers plant growth and poses risks to wildlife, including possible genetic damage to some birds.

Here It Is, a Sea Turtle Made of Cigarette Butts

The countless cigarette butts littering a Florida beach have finally been put to use, thanks to a turtle-shaped anti-littering PSA named, “Cig.” Self-taught artist and Marine Biology BA Shelly Marshall created Cig after cleaning up garbage with volunteer group Ocean Hour in her home of Gulf Breeze, FL. In just one hour they collected the 1,200 individual cigarette butts that comprise the tobacco turtle, an amount that disgusted Marshall and inspired her to create this sculpture.

Making the tobacco industry pay for cigarette litter could stop 4.5 billion butts polluting the Australian environment

Cigarette butts with filters are the most commonly littered item worldwide, with a staggering 4.5 trillion of them tossed into the environment each year. This is a huge problem; many end up on beaches and in the ocean, and the tar from burnt tobacco in the filter can be toxic to wildlife. Fixing the problem has focused on changing the behaviour of people who smoke, but a new report shows making the tobacco industry responsible for the litter with a mandatory product stewardship scheme is likely to have a much greater impact.

Millions of Discarded Cigarette Butts Are Poisoning the Planet

Scientists have discovered new evidence to make smokers feel even guiltier about their foul habit. Not only are the tobacco and chemicals in cigarettes carcinogenic. It turns out that their filters are so toxic that discarded butts have become a major threat to the planet’s health, according to San Diego State University Public Health Professor Thomas Novotny and researcher Elli Slaughter.

More Harm Than Good

Why cigarette filters should be eliminated from the commercial cigarette market

No ifs, ands, or butts

Cigarette butts are the most littered item on the planet. Two new studies from the Institute for Global Tobacco Control point to possible solutions. Most cigarette butts contain filters, which are made of nonbiodegradable plastic and contain toxic chemicals that leach into the soil and water.

Not-so-disposable e-cigarettes: Young people grapple with e-cigarette waste amid lack of safe disposal options

Single-use e-cigarettes, the most commonly used e-cigarette device type in 2023, contain lithium batteries and e-liquids encased in plastic that can leach chemicals into the environment or even explode, causing fires at trash and recycling plants. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, at least five disposable e-cigarettes are being thrown away every second in the United States, amounting to an alarming 150 million devices per year.

One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Triumph in the ‘Litter League’

Clean-up efforts get competitive, with workout videos and strategic planning; ‘If you get obsessed with picking up cigarette butts, you’re going to lose’

The World’s Most Littered Item Comes Under Fire

Smokers’ habit of tossing cigarette butts on the ground sparks concerns about single-use plastic.

Watch: Cigarette Butts, World's #1 Litter, Recycled as Park Benches

A growing movement targets cigarette waste as a solvable problem.

Why cigarette butts threaten to stub out marine life

With cigarette filters made up of tiny pieces of plastic capable of causing untold damage to marine life, banning them could be one answer.

Resources

5 ways cigarette litter impacts the environment

Even as the smoking rate has gone down, cigarette butts seem to be everywhere, scattered along green spaces, sidewalks, roadsides, beaches, waterways—virtually everywhere we go. So, it may come as no surprise that cigarettes are the most littered item on earth.

Cigarette Litter Prevention Program

The Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP), created by Keep America Beautiful® in 2002, is the nation’s largest program aimed at eliminating cigarette litter.

Cigarette Waste Free Recycling Program

We’ve made getting started with the Cigarette Waste Free Recycling Program easy! Simply download a free shipping label to ship your cigarette waste to TerraCycle, and we’ll recycle it.

Rethink Butts

The dangers from smoking don’t stop once a cigarette is stubbed out. Cigarette butts leach toxic chemicals and carcinogens that pollute the environment. They’re poisonous to wildlife and can contaminate water sources. And they’re the number one littered item on US roadways and the number one item found on beaches and in waterways worldwide.