throwing cigarette butts out the car window

Anyone who litters has as much self respect for themselves as they do their own surroundings

Manky manky manky

Hammer89 wrote: »

I don't need to make myself feel better because I don't believe there's anything inherently wrong with flicking a cigarette away.

See anything wrong here?

Cigarettes are the most littered item on earth. Worldwide, about 4.5 trillion cigarettes are littered each year.

Littered cigarette butts leach toxic chemicals—such as arsenic (used to kill rats) and lead, to name a few—into the environment and can contaminate water. The toxic exposure can poison fish, as well as animals who eat cigarette butts. If you throw your cigarette butts on the ground, they eventually find their way to the ocean and other water sheds and YOU are contributing to the most commonly found man-made waste that originates from land.

Plastic pieces have been found in the stomachs of fish, birds, whales, and other marine creatures that mistake them as food, swallowing harmful plastic and toxic chemicals. Ingestion of plastic cigarette filters is a threat to wildlife. Sometimes even young children pick up and ingest cigarette butts.
Wind and rain often carry cigarette butts into waterways, where the toxic chemicals in the cigarette filters leak out, threatening the quality of the water and the creatures that live in it.

98 percent of cigarette filters are made of plastic fibers (cellulose acetate) that are tightly packed together, which leads to an estimated 1.69 billion pounds of cigarette butts winding up as toxic trash each year.

The plastic fibers in cigarettes are non-biodegradable, meaning they won't organically break down. Although cigarettes don’t break down naturally, they can gradually decompose depending on environmental conditions like the rain and sun. Estimates on the time it takes vary, but a recent study found that a cigarette butt was only about 38 percent decomposed after two years. It can take total up to 25 years to break down.

Some of the costs are associated with the manpower and resources to pick up litter. Who picks up litter? Employees of parks, schools, hotels, restaurants, and local governments have to pick up litter, as well as volunteers who care about the environment.
Cigarettes are often littered within 10 feet of a permanent ashtray. Now that most buildings do not allow smoking inside, the problem of discarded butts on sidewalks, entryways and in courtyards is increasing.
Other costs are incurred when a discarded cigarette butt starts a fire that destroys a forest, a field, or people's homes. Fires caused by cigarette butts claim the lives of about 1,000 people and injure about 3,000 people each year.
The costs of "lost revenue" are incurred when tourists will not spend their vacation dollars to visit a beach or park that is full of litter and trash.

Hammer89 wrote: »

As I said, I draw the line at rubbish - actual rubbish. There's no reason why you can't keep an empty bottle of Lilt or a Twix wrapper in your pocket until you happen upon a bin. You can't with cigarette butts because the butt itself makes you and your clothes smell far worse than the smoke, so it gets flicked away or dropped and stood on. And that's the end of it. It ends up being sucked up into one of those ground-cleaning machines, or the wind blows it away, or the rain strips the paper and loose tobacco from it and suddenly it's just a half-an-inch long bit of fibre that nobody notices on their way to or from work.

Also, I know this is Boards, but let's not compare the flicking of a cigarette butt to the dumping of a fridge.

It's hard to imagine anyone being much more willfully ignorant than that. Flicking away a cigarette butt isn't the end of it. "Suddenly" it's just a half inch long? WTAF. There is no decomposition processes that happens "suddenly."

Here's what ACTUALLY happens.

If you throw your cigarette butts on the ground, they eventually find their way to the ocean and other water sheds and YOU are contributing to the most commonly found man-made waste that originates from land.

Wind and rain often carry cigarette butts into waterways, where the toxic chemicals in the cigarette filters leak out, threatening the quality of the water and the creatures that live in it.

It can take total up to 25 years to break down.

Who picks up litter? A street sweeper isn't doing most of it.
Employees of parks, schools, hotels, restaurants, and local governments have to pick up litter, as well as volunteers who care about the environment.