A simple flick is often enough to make a cigarette butt disappear… from our sight. It is only then, far from us and from our good conscience, that it turns into a beautiful filth, a piece of garbage, even if we refer to its quality of waste. To the point of becoming one of the worst threats to humanity?
1. Cigarette butts are the main source of plastic pollution in the oceans
Cigarette filters contain traces of microplastics: small fragments found in oceans around the world, including at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest in the world. Studies have calculated that these filters (whose efficiency is quite relative) would be the first source of plastic pollution in the oceans, ahead of plastic bags and straws!
2. 40% of litter collected on beaches and by the sea is cigarette butts
It’s true that nothing looks more like a giant ashtray than a beautiful beach! It is therefore impossible to blame smokers who conscientiously crush their cigarettes thinking they are acting as good citizens. Can’t wait to see the rest, when humanity will notice that the beach still looks a lot like a giant litter…
3. Up to 10% of fires are due to poorly extinguished cigarette butts
The badly extinguished cigarette butt continues to burn for 3 to 4 hours after being thrown away. More than enough time to cause a fire to start, whether in nature or even at home. The butt is a big arsonist who is just waiting for an accomplice to declare his love.
4. A cigarette butt takes 12 long years to decompose in nature
The big advantage is that with a bit of luck, the cigarette butt that we will have carelessly thrown away on the beach the summer of our 16 years, our baby will be able to play with it a few years later during his wanderings as a foursome paws ! The chance of life sometimes does things so well.
5. A cigarette butt alone can pollute up to 500 liters of water
The sea is disgusting, the fish fuck in it, but not only… they also started smoking for several decades! Passive smokers, they take advantage of the cigarette butts rejected by the city gutters which end their journey in the rivers then the sea. A single cigarette butt would also be able to kill in 96 hours, half of the fish present in 1 liter of water!
6. Cigarette butts raise your taxes (even if you’re a non-smoker)
The collection and treatment of cigarette butts cost each French person €38 in tax per year. This is called the community. It’s practical for lots of things even if it sometimes dilutes everyone’s responsibility.
7. 5% of deforestation on the planet is due to tobacco
Smoking kills ! But not only cigarette fans. The planet also coughs, tobacco attacking not only the arteries of smokers, but also the lungs of the planet. Forests are thus regularly retreating to make way for new tobacco fields. In addition, 11 million tons of wood are used each year to dry tobacco leaves. And it does not stop there since, on average, it is considered that it is necessary to cut down a tree to manufacture the packaging and the paper of 15 packets of cigarettes! Every year, 200,000 hectares of forest are destroyed worldwide for the production of cigarettes alone. Thank you who?
8. 30 billion cigarette butts are thrown on the ground each year in France!
Big smokers = big polluters, the French participate with zeal in the ambitious project of transforming the planet into an enormous giant ashtray. Thus, approximately 60% of cigarettes smoked in France each year would end up in nature!
9. The filter contained in the butt would be useless
This small piece of cellulose would be studied according to the tobacco industry, to filter the 172 toxic substances contained in a cigarette! Except that in reality, many studies have shown that these filters were mainly there to reassure users, their effectiveness being quite relative. Cigarettes thus remain 57 times more carcinogenic than any pollutant present in the atmosphere! To put it simply, it is better to smoke a good big exhaust pipe than to roll a cigarette!
10. The World’s Worst Home Scent
According to one study, it would take a hurricane-force air current to rid a room of the toxic components found in cigarette smoke, as well as its odor. If it is, the hurricanes which strike more and more often the four corners of the world are ultimately only the mega VMC of the Earth which starts to get rid of all the Co2 that we send to it in the bronchi!