Study: Cigarette Butts—Not Plastic Straws—Are The Worst Contaminant of Oceans

[cheesethief]

This is why we do it cheesethief . Because it’s got to start somewhere. If those who do get it demonstrate the necessary changes so that those who don’t yet understand it with sufficient determination and consistency, hopefully we’ll overcome the inertia and eventually arrive at some kind of beneficial tipping point.

It’s got to be better than doing nothing.

Mumbai has banned disposable plastic bags and bottles. We ought to have done so too. Seeing other nations do it makes it more likely that it will happen here.

Yes, I'm with you, anything is better than nothing, even if it just cleans up the streets a bit. I've just been a bit perplexed at the way these recent TV campaigns seem to have glossed over a glaring disconnect. The overwhelming suggestion they put forward is that reducing the plastic we throw away will reduce the plastic pollution in the seas, whereas in reality it probably won't make much difference. Obviously that's no reason not to do it, and I'm totally behind the notion of practising what we preach when it comes to dealing with other countries.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

Cigarette butts are not made from cellulose, they’re made of cellulose acetate, which is a plastic.

And billions of cigarette butts taking a minimum of ten years to break down is definitely a problem.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Cigarette butts are not made from cellulose, they’re made of cellulose acetate, which is a plastic.

And billions of cigarette butts taking a minimum of ten years to break down is definitely a problem.

The other thing to consider with Cigarette butts is that the residual tobacco in them contains a pesticide that's banned in many parts of the world.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

It’s not only the filter that is a pollutant. All aspects of the cigarette butt are problematic. And there’s often at least some cigarette matter involved with a butt.

Cigarette Litter --Filters



It’s true that cigarette butts aren’t the largest part of the problem. But it’s still a huge issue, and it absolutely is something that the individual smoker can address. If every smoker was aware and disposed of their butts responsibly, it would make a significant dent in the larger problem.


One of the important point she here is that rather than feeling helpless and hopeless in the face of the vastness of the problem, a single smoker can significantly reduce their personal footprint simply by thinking about where and how they get rid of their cigarettes. And if one person does it, it’s more likely that their mates will do it too.

 

[eatmorecheese]

I have two portable ashtrays, given to me by Croydon council a couple of years ago. They sent people out to engage with people smoking in the town centre, warning that fines would be issued in the future and handing out a positive solution.

I thought this was a great initiative, rare enough in Croydon

 

[Saul Goodman]

Cigarette butts are not made from cellulose, they’re made of cellulose acetate, which is a plastic.

And billions of cigarette butts taking a minimum of ten years to break down is definitely a problem.

I believe that figure is approximately 18 months.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

I believe that figure is approximately 18 months.

I stand corrected.

A minimum of 18 months, and up to 10 years.

I wonder what specific factors make such a difference.

I also wonder if the residual nanoparticles are all completely broken down or just undetectable by ordinary means or in situ.

 

[Edie]

I think I always assumed they were made of a fibrous organic material so it was akin to chucking an apple core in a hedge

 

[SheilaNaGig]

An article from Cigarette Butt Decomposition and Associated Chemical Changes Assessed by 13C CPMAS NMR

Cigarette butts (CBs) are the most common type of litter on earth, with an estimated amount of 4.5 trillion discarded annually [1,2]. Unsurprisingly, several studies have reported that CBs are the most common item retrieved by clean-up activities in public areas such as beaches and parks [3,4]. Beyond being unsightly, when disposed of in the environment CBs pose a major threat to living organisms and ecosystem health (review in [5]). The few studies available report that CBs are toxic to microbes and cladocerans [6], insects [7], and also fish [8]. A recent study reported that CBs affect avian behaviour in urban ecosystems [9]. Such studies highlighted a higher toxic effect of smoked vs. unsmoked CBs since the former retain a substantial amount of nicotine and other compounds derived from tobacco combustion, including hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, benzene, phenols and pyridines [10].

In addition to posing a toxic hazard, CBs accumulate in the environment in alarming quantities because of their slow degradation rate. They are made of compressed, plasticized cellulose acetate wrapped in an external paper layer. The high degree of acetate substitution (~2.45) makes the cellulose inaccessible to microbes for biological decomposition [11]. To become a food source for environmental microbes, cellulose acetate can be de-acetylated by chemical hydrolysis to a lower degree of substitution (~1), a fairly slow process under ambient conditions that is favoured by high UV radiation [12]. Despite the knowledge available about degradation of pure cellulose acetate films (review in [13]), few studies have addressed the degradation dynamics of whole CBs in realistic ecological conditions. According to grey literature studies, often sponsored by the tobacco industry, CBs require several years to degrade completely (e.g. [14,15]), but robust scientific data were not provided. In this regard, to the best of our knowledge, no peer-reviewed work has investigated long-term CB decomposition.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

I think I always assumed they were made of a fibrous organic material so it was akin to chucking an apple core in a hedge

I think I thought that too, before I thought about it.

 

[Saul Goodman]

I stand corrected.

A minimum of 18 months, and up to 10 years.

I wonder what specific factors make such a difference.

I also wonder if the residual nanoparticles are all completely broken down or just undetectable by ordinary means or in situ.

UV light is the biggest factor. UV light causes photodegradation of the polymer chains in plastics, which makes them brittle and massively more susceptible to mechanical degradation.

 

[Pickman's model]

A lot of people seem to think it's OK to chuck their cigarette butts in storm drains, possibly because they don't know what a storm drain is or does.

...possibly because they do.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

UV light is the biggest factor. UV light causes photodegradation of the polymer chains in plastics, which makes them brittle and massively more susceptible to mechanical degradation.

So do they just break into smaller and smaller places particles, or do they really degrade down into compounds and elements?

Even then, some of those compounds are going to be toxic in the environment, as Yuwipi Woman woman has pointed out.

And if it due to UV, then the butts in landfill will be the longest lasting, whilst those in Edie ’s roadside hedge will break down faster?

 

[Edie]

The other thing I guess I think about responsible disposal is that it all ends up in the ground at some point anyroad

 

[gentlegreen]

It's a good job asbestos cigarette filters never caught on !

 

[JimW]

I smoke rollies with no filter but I always bin those too, including sticking the butt in my picket if no bin. Since I stink of fags anyway, might as well go the full ten yards.

 

[pesh]

you can buy biodegradable filters now, we've been using them for a while and they're fine.

 

[nyxx]

/The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Isn’t What You Think it Is

According to this article 46% of the plastic polluting the ocean is from discarded fishing nets.

We should most definitely be reducing single use plastic, absolutely.
But the whole banning plastic straws thing was a classic case of turning a problem largely caused by a global industry into a personal responsibility, and in the process, imo taking the awareness and energy for “doing something” and directing at completely the wrong target.

On a personal level the best thing you can probably do to stop the increase in plastics in the ocean is to stop eating fish. That might also begin to restore the balance of the ocean’s ecosystem as many species are diminished (& there’s many issues with farmed fish too - eg, farmed fish break out of their cages and cause problems for the wild fish because they’ve been bred to be bigger...)

But yeah do that alongside cutting down on single use plastics and disposing of cigarette butts responsibly.

 

[SpackleFrog]

you can buy biodegradable filters now, we've been using them for a while and they're fine.

Can you get them in bog standard newsagents or whatever? Filters have been bothering me for a while cos some of them come with so much unncessecary plastic.

 

[pesh]

Can you get them in bog standard newsagents or whatever? Filters have been bothering me for a while cos some of them come with so much unncessecary plastic.

i think so, they're made by Swan and we get them in our local co-op, i think Rizla have started making them as well. they do still have the plastic on them though which is a bit daft.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

It's a good job asbestos cigarette filters never caught on !

They were a Thing for about five years. And there was a payout for the harm caused as recently as 2011.

Asbestos Cigarette Filters - Toxic Useage, Lawsuits & Brands

But yeah, a good thing it was only five years.

 

[extra dry]

I've seen people speculating that the clay pipes that people used for the first 300 years were often single-use.
I'm somewhat skeptical because quite a lot of them were ornate, and it can't be that much hassle to clear the tar using a red hot wire ...

This lady finds the pipes all along the Thames.

mudlarking finds

 

[Saul Goodman]

So do they just break into smaller and smaller places particles, or do they really degrade down into compounds and elements?

Even then, some of those compounds are going to be toxic in the environment, as Yuwipi Woman woman has pointed out.

And if it due to UV, then the butts in landfill will be the longest lasting, whilst those in Edie ’s roadside hedge will break down faster?

I'd say they're just broken into smaller particles but so small as to be inconsequential.
Edie's hedge butt will break down faster but I reckon it also has more harmful potential than one in a landfill.

 

[smmudge]

I've seen people speculating that the clay pipes that people used for the first 300 years were often single-use.
I'm somewhat skeptical because quite a lot of them were ornate, and it can't be that much hassle to clear the tar using a red hot wire ...

I think that might be true. My wife works on building sites and was working on one for a London hospital, they have an archaeologist on site in case they dig up anything rare.

Well they found one of those clay pipes, hundreds of years old, the archaeologist let my wife keep it as apparently they're not rare at all!!

 

[mauvais]

How sure are we that humans are responsible, i.e. that it's anthropogenic fag waste? It seems to me to be equally possible that they were dumped there by, for example, chain-smoking whales. A whale's mouth could probably hold at least a dozen cigarettes at any one time, something that 'scientists' really ought to look into.

 

[Artaxerxes]

I think that might be true. My wife works on building sites and was working on one for a London hospital, they have an archaeologist on site in case they dig up anything rare.

Well they found one of those clay pipes, hundreds of years old, the archaeologist let my wife keep it as apparently they're not rare at all!!

A lot of the waterfront taverns did them as promotional items, especially in later years. These are the more ornate ones.

They could be quite long so they were liable to break fairly easily.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

I think that might be true. My wife works on building sites and was working on one for a London hospital, they have an archaeologist on site in case they dig up anything rare.

Well they found one of those clay pipes, hundreds of years old, the archaeologist let my wife keep it as apparently they're not rare at all!!

I’ve found parts of clay pipes in every garden I’ve ever gardened in.

When my dad took us kids to Jamestown in America, which is a “living museum” of one of the earliest European settlements there, they showed us a “very precious and rare artefact”, which was a clay pipe. We weren’t impressed really. We got bored and we were arsing about and my dad said “Hey come on kids, this is heritage! History!” and we said “Dad, we’ve lived in houses older than this” and he went “... Okay, yeah, fair enough.”

 

[gentlegreen]

I found a clay pipe inside my window surround - left there by the builder in the late 19thC.

 

[souljacker]

I used to be one of those smokers who never thought twice about throwing a fag butt out the car window, stepping it out on the street, or in the grass or sand. I know it sounds completely implausible but I’d never considered there was anything wrong with it until I read a thread here

If we are going to admit to past discretions, I'll admit that, when smoking on the beach, I would put the cig out by simply burying it in the sand. I can spend a day quite happily on a beach and used to be a 20+ a day smoker. What a twattish thing to do!

I’ve found parts of clay pipes in every garden I’ve ever gardened in.

When my dad took us kids to Jamestown in America, which is a “living museum” of one of the earliest European settlements there, they showed us a “very precious and rare artefact”, which was a clay pipe. We weren’t impressed really. We got bored and we were arsing about and my dad said “Hey come on kids, this is heritage! History!” and we said “Dad, we’ve lived in houses older than this” and he went “... Okay, yeah, fair enough.”

I was doing some touristy stuff in Bath once and overheard a couple of old americans comment that one of the houses in the Royal Crescent was 'older than our goddam country'.

 

[Artaxerxes]

I found a clay pipe inside my window surround - left there by the builder in the late 19thC.

Good job it wasn't a curse cat.