Super Eco

Photo credit: Roomic Cube, flickr

Cigarette butts account for 50% of all litter in most Western countries. Now, it's not too often that we start off a post at Super Eco by blurting out the cold, hard fact of the matter—but this is just disgusting. How many times have you seen drivers fling a butt out the window, assuming that such a tiny thing couldn't possibly have much of an environmental impact? Blech.

According to BUTTsOUT, cigarette butt litter is the world’s greatest environmental litter problem.

• Some 4.3 trillion cigarette butts end up as litter every year, worldwide.
• American smokers contribute more than 250 billion cigarette butts to the litter per year, with UK smokers adding 200 tons of butts and Australians littering more than 7 billion cigarette butts
• Almost 1 in 3 cigarette butts ends up as litter.

It's not only the sheer quantity of butts that creates such an appalling litter problem.

• It can take up to 12 years (some say 25 years or more) for a cigarette butt to break down.
• Cigarette butts can leach chemicals including cadmium, lead and arsenic into the water table and marine environment as quickly as an hour after contact with water.
• Cigarette butts have been found in the stomachs of fish, whales, birds and other marine animals.

Banning cigarettes isn't enough. In fact, smoking bans actually aggravate butt litter. Cigarette butt litter dramatically increases where indoor smoking bans are implemented, as careless smokers collectively puff up and toss out a torrent of tiny, toxic trash. Over 4 trillion—that's TRILLION, with a T— cigarette butts ending up as litter every year ... Time for smokers to stop blowing off their careless ways, wouldn't you agree?