
Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash - SmkyMt
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/plastic-straw-ban-cigarette-butts-are-single-greatest-source-ocean-n903661
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ghouse
My own cognitive bias about smokers littering is why I vote in favor of any
cigarette tax. Yes, I realize that not all smokers think the street or
sidewalk is an appropriate place for their used cigarette. But the people I
see smoking do this, so I (inaccurately) assume they all do (without
consequence).

~~~
rrauenza
It seems no one uses their car ashtray anymore, either -- probably because it
makes the car stink.

So they hold the cig outside their window, tap the ashes into the street, and
often flick the butt into the road. I sometimes wonder how many lit cigs get
dropped by accident into the road.

~~~
ams6110
What cars still have ashtrays? I haven't seen one since 1990s models. I have
several cars 2002 - 2004 and none of them have an ashtray, or a lighter.

~~~
rrauenza
Wow! You're right -- and they don't come with lighters anymore either, at
least not _standard_ ...

I guess cigarettes are also to blame for our lousy 12v outlet design?

~~~
mikestew
_I guess cigarettes are also to blame for our lousy 12v outlet design?_

Pretty much. There's some business school case study waiting there about
network effects, or backcompat, or something. Someone a long time ago needed
12VDC for their new KarDooHickey(tm), but how is the user easily going to get
12V to the device? And here we are.

VWs and BMW motorcycles used/use a Hella plug that is similar to a lighter
plug, but was actually designed to be used the way lighter plugs are now. Our
'81 VW camper van has one on the dash. Sadly, despite being a better design
for the purpose, BMW motorcycles are the only vehicles I now of that still use
them. I can run a 75W electric jacket off those plugs, something I would not
try with a lighter plug (it might work for a while, but not reliably).

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simonebrunozzi
Simple solution, but thought to implement: do to cigarette butts what it has
been done for empty glass bottles: each one has a deposit cost of, say, $0.20,
and when you return them you get the money back.

Cigarette packs should be modified to allow for easy storage of used butts, so
you can return it to the cigarette seller when you buy a new pack.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
I like the idea.. it is tricky to get right though. Cigarette butts smell a
lot, so if smokers started carrying around 20 butts in their pack at
work/home, non-smokers would not like it. Its hard to imagine modifying a pack
cheaply enough to contain the smell.

~~~
netsharc
In Europe where people get their deposit back for bottles, the homeless
(interestingly, not just them, a study in Germany said it also gave bored
pensioners something to do) look in trash cans to find bottles to return. I
remember reading an experiment where a city (I think in Canada) implemented a
trial program to give people 6 cents per cigarette butt: they spent the money
marked for the returns quicker than expected because the homeless people
collected butts diligently.

It's a bit of a crazy world to make the homeless clean up pollution other
people make, but even without this program there are (and will) still be
homeless people...

~~~
posterboy
I'd imagine public ashtrays be pillaged, as they are now to recycle the half
smoked tobacco rests. Bad idea.

~~~
Harvey-Specter
Who cares if public ashtrays are "pillaged"?

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kevcampb
Except it isn't, it's fishing nets

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w)

~~~
gruez
that only talks about garbage content in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
maybe cigarette butts have different physical characteristics that causes it
to accumulate differently than plastics?

edit: reading the paper further, it looks like they're only surveyed plastics,
not any other materials.

~~~
Isamu
From the article:

> The vast majority of the 5.6 trillion cigarettes manufactured worldwide each
> year come with filters made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that can
> take a decade or more to decompose

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Eric_WVGG
Love this project to train crows to pick cigarette butts.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15486368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15486368)

I had hoped that the vaping trend would mean fewer cigarette butts, but now
I'm seeing plastic Juul capsules littered here and there. So much for
ecological millennials…

~~~
learnstats2
I hate that project. It's completely gross to poison crows by training them to
do something that we could train humans to do - _with the exact same incentive
system_.

~~~
king_phil
Is there any evidence that the crows are poisoned? Can you provide the source?

~~~
learnstats2
Why would you demand evidence for this?

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mmanfrin
Cigarette butts will have fully degraded within 15 years. Plastic straws take
hundreds of years unless they're flaked off by the sun and then become small
plastic bits in the stomachs of fish (still undegraded). It's all bad, but
cigarette butts are significantly less worse than plastic.

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Rotdhizon
I read somewhere the other week that fishing gear was the biggest source of
ocean trash. Which is it?

~~~
giarc
Likely due to volume vs pieces.

By volume, I believe fishing nets are the largest polluter, but likely if you
counted the pieces, cigarette butts might be higher.

~~~
patwolf
That does seem like a faulty metric to identify the worst pollution problems.
By pure count there are probably more microbeads than cigarettes in the ocean.
So this article is basically saying that of the countable pieces of pollution
in the ocean, there are more pieces of cigarette butts than anything else.

I have a hard time trusting reputable news sites when they have this type of
sensational reporting.

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SiempreViernes
On the one hand, cigarettes give you a slow painful death and they are _still_
not universally banned, so there is not much prior reason for hope.

On the other, banning filters seems like a simple enough solution to such a
concrete and immediate problem as littering that it might be reasonable to
believe an enforce can be implemented despite the track record.

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amluto
> The vast majority of the 5.6 trillion cigarettes manufactured worldwide each
> year come with filters made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that can
> take a decade or more to decompose.

Another way of saying this is: they’re moderately biodegradable. It would seem
reasonable to give manufacturers a strong incentive to make them even more
biodegradable.

(To be clear, I think that smoking in public commercial spaces is seriously
problematic, and I think that smokers should find a way to responsibly dispos
of their trash or have one forced on them. But it does seem like the degree of
blame here is a bit overblown.)

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admax88q
How do all these things end up in the ocean in the first place? Plastic straws
or cigarette butts, seems like we have a garbage collection problem.

Rather than banning the item of the day that we find in the ocean, can we fix
garbage collection so that none of or crap ends up there?

~~~
basic1
How is something made of plant matter and paper not biodegradable anyway?

~~~
gumby
The cigarette is made of (chemically treated) plant matter and paper, but the
filter is not. Its main purpose is to turn brown when heated so the smoker
thinks the filter has trapped something bad for them. A "marketing function"
as the article says.

~~~
J_cst
If cigarette smoke is blown through a paper tissue it will get stained (dark
brown spot)[0]. I don't think paper tissue is treated in order to become brown
with cigarette smoke. Perhaps it absorbs something? On the other side,
obviously, the cigarette filter (butt) does not seem effective in protecting
the lungs from cancer or other smoking generated doseases. From that point of
view it has only a "marketing" function.

[0]source: personal experience

~~~
gumby
"One chemist discovered that if you adjust the pH in cellulose-acetate
filters, you can get them to change color during the smoking process, making
it look like some really bad stuff is being screened out."

[https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-
dope/ar...](https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-
dope/article/20781759/do-cigarette-filters-do-anything)

Or you might prefer this:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688990/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688990/)

~~~
J_cst
Thank you for your references. The second one has little to do with the
subject though. The first one confirms that "This did, indeed, block a little
tar and toxic gas, but smokers, ever resourceful, responded by changing their
behavior—smoking more, taking deeper puffs, etc—thereby making the practical
effect of the cellulose-acetate filter approximately nil". This by the way, is
what happens in the napkin "experiment" I was referring to. By the way, I just
learnt that what I was calling a "filter", it is not a filter, but a mixer.[0]

TL;DR: It's a device whose purpose is to mix the smoke of the cigarette with
air which is intaken via the micro holes found on the body of the mixer
(a.k.a. "filter). The different air/smoke mix rates give the smoker a
different perception of the smoothness / lightness of the cigarette. As a side
note, as your first reference mentions, this "filter novelty" may have made
things worst as the smoker will make deeper breaths and keep the smoke longer
into the lungs when inhaling a more diluted smoke puff.

[0]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/cigarette...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/cigarette-
filters/533379/)

~~~
gumby
The second ref was as support that the "filter"s are also bad for you in their
own right but provide a "benefit halo" that helps support smoking, just as the
tobacco companies intended.

~~~
J_cst
Thank you

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scoopdewoop
Even considering the cartridges, vaping is much less impactful as far as
littering. Even one small juul pod replaces at least a pack worth of butts.
With time less wasteful designs can certainly catch on.

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JoeAltmaier
How is organic plant material in the ocean, anything but an esthetic problem?

~~~
gruez
>The cellulose acetate fibers used as the predominant filter material do not
readily biodegrade because of the acetyl groups on the cellulose backbone
which in itself can quickly be degraded by various microorganisms employing
cellulases.[23] A normal life span of a discarded filter is thought to be up
to 15 years.[24]

