Cigarette butts are constructed of cellulose acetate, that’s a form of plastic. Depending on density and chemicals and quality, it takes months, and often years to break down. When it does finally break down, all the dyes, the tars, the burn rate controllers, whiteners, and the cellulose acetate toxins themselves disperse into the ground. That doesn’t mean it literally goes away, people. It just means we can’t see it but the effects are visible if we open our eyes and look.
Okay, so the smoker has to smoke. I totally get that. Go ahead; smoke yourselves right on into happy-river-styxville. As an ex-smoker, I get the deadly pleasure of it. But please, put your butts in a can. A cigarette butt is litter. Worse, it’s toxic litter. And FYI, fieldstripping does nothing but make it less visible. The plastic and toxins are still there whether we can see them or not. It still breaks down into the ground, poisoning any living thing it comes in contact with.
I guess what I’m wondering is, where and when along the way were people taught that the Earth was a trashcan. Have we no respect for ourselves, other living things and the Earth. Are we so lazy and thoughtless, and careless that we toss our trash, our toxic trash, wherever it pleases us. Why are humans, thinking humans, the only species that destroys its water supply, devastates and decimates its food sources, and poisons the very ground it lives on.
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When picking up trash along the beach front, I am never surprised that the place I find the most cigarette butts is around the benches under the awning where, funny enough, butt cans have been affixed to the awning posts, right there next to the benches. Yet, people throw their butts on the ground as if they're the only one who matters in universe. News Flash, the rest of us matter, too. Please, smokers, we implore you, PUT YOUR BUTTS IN THE CANS.