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Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash
- bestskiieronthe 8y agoMaybe there's an opportunity for cigarette manufacturers to capitalize on compostable filters? Can it be done?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- woodruffw 8y agoOnly tangentially related, but I am continually astonished by the absence of any sort of social norms surrounding cigarette butt disposal. I have (otherwise environmentally conscious!) friends who smoke, and I've personally witnessed them flick their cigarettes into gutters and on streets. As a serious question, without judgment: are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon?
- seriousSmoker 8y agoBecause we are trying to die, and simply do not give a fuck. Feed that into your facebook suicide watch/dark tetrad NLP algorithm, and use it as a political impetus for a smoking prohibition bill, and behavior modification after school program. Save the world from it’s final free thought. #YOLO
- darkpuma 8y agoIf nothing else I appreciate your honesty.
- seer 8y agoIt is of course rational to throw trash when you don't give a fuck. The parent question is more about why people that do give a fuck otherwise, would flick and stomp their discarded cigarette buts. The question is interesting precisely because it falls outside the output you would get from a heuristic algo of "good people don't litter", "bad people do".
- seriousSmoker 8y agoThe next time you pass through a public restroom, count how many paper towels are on the floor. It doesn’t matter if it’s male or female. The results are always the same. If the bathroom provides paper towels, there’s almost always a non-zero quantity of wet paper towels stuck to the floor. If the bathroom only has electric hot air hand driers, there will be none. How do the paper towels get on the floor? The bathroom likely gets cleaned once a day. Probably at night. So, the next day, someone, anyone, drops the first paper towel of the day for some reason, any reason, and leaves it there. It stays there the rest of the day. More follow, all accumulating until someone cleans the whole bathroom at the end of the day. Who are these people? Why don’t they just fucking pick up the paper towels they careless permit to fall onto the floor? But to complain about such things is to scream at the tide. You can admit that paper towels are not something a public restroom should put into the hands of random strangers who have no incentive to change their behavior. You can place paper towels within reach, and throw people in jail for their messy carelessness, or you can hire a janitor. Or you can just let wet paper towels cover the floor, absorbing every form of moisture available on the floor of a typical public restroom.
- seer 8y agoThis one is a lot easier to model though isn’t it? If you accidentally drop a paper towel, the “psychological cost” of rising it from the floor is astronomically more than just using it - it would have floor dirt all over it. So it can easily go over your “nice person” threshold. Especially if as you’ve mentioned, there will be more towels on the floor - the broken windows theory. All of this is exasperated by the general fear of dirt in western cultures, which leads to a lot of other well documented ill effects, especially in children. People are just way too grossed out to actually clean up, if there are no tools to do so in a clean manner. All easy to explain, and you are right - if you do remove the littering option for people, and give them a reasonable alternative, they will litter less. But the cigarette butts? They have only the “there’s some on the floor so it must be ok” going for them. But even so it seems rather weird.
- sigi45 8y agoOr into nature :-(
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chrisseaton 8y ago> are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon? Smokers aren't exactly known for their good judgement, manners and consideration for others in the first place, are they?
- lmilcin 8y agoSmoking is addiction that is demonstrably bad for your health and has no benefits. I grew up in an environment where smoking was encouraged and I can understand a person that conforms to their buddies. I have personally never tasted it but when I was teen virtually everybody smoked and it took a lot of willpower to withstand the pressure. I think these days, in western world, except for schools, low income neighborhoods and low income jobs to be smoking means you have not enough willpower to end it. I would say most middle class people and office workers do not encourage smoking or will actively discourage it and smoking is mostly treated as a disease.
- cgag 8y agothere are tons of benefits which is why people do it
- craigsmansion 8y agoI think it's because the butt is usually made to resemble some natural material like cork. Since the rest of it (paper, tobacco, and ashes) is easily degradable, I think the natural assumption is the butt is degradable as well, and the notion that every other smoker seems to think so isn't helping. So to answer the question: I suspect it's simply a lack of information. As a data point I'll add that I stopped deposing them right away a long time ago, because I suspected they might not be easily degradable, but this is actually the first time I've read this is the case. If I'm correct I see no harm in correcting friends who smoke in their behaviour. They are simply unaware.
- homero 8y agoYeah i thought it was biodegradable and thought they would melt away.
- jessaustin 8y agoIf they were biodegradable they wouldn't completely cover the shoulders of every road and highway.
- mcbits 8y agoEven not being biodegradable, they degrade in a couple of years and wouldn't cover the shoulders of every road if the supply wasn't constantly being replenished.
- danlugo92 8y agoThat's not how biodegradation works...
- darkpuma 8y agoEven if they were biodegradable, why would that make it okay to throw them on the ground? Half an uneaten sandwich is certainly biodegradable. Ants or birds would probably dispose of it in days. But what sort of degenerate just tosses half a sandwich onto the sidewalk? That's inconceivable behavior for most people.
- matz1 8y agoWhat is there to explain? Its convenient.
- loteck 8y ago"People incapable of guilt do tend to have a good time."
- black-tea 8y agoI think people think they are biodegradable.
- lmilcin 8y agoI think it is related to people not cleaning after their dogs and throwing their thrash on the street or in the woods. These are people who just don't give a shit about other people and only act like they care when it is convenient or necessary. I know a couple of smokers that will make sure they have a place to dispose their butt after they are finished and I know some that will dispose them only when somebody is watching (yeah, we have windows in offices, too...)
- DanBC 8y ago(I don't smoke and have never smoked) For some people it's as simple as not wanting to carry around some dirty stinking cigarette butts. Portable ashtrays are sometimes produced, but they never seem to catch on. And we shouldn't ignore the power of the really strong habit they've formed of flicking them away.
- Thriptic 8y agoI smoke cigars occasionally and this is exactly why I don't carry remnants home; they smell bad for several hours after use and I don't want to stink up my clothes or apartment. I try my hardest to dispose of them in a socially conscious way (in designated cigarette disposal boxes or by immersing them in water to extinguish them and then putting them in trash cans) but sometimes the infrastructure is not there to support that. In that case I remove all the non-biodegradable elements and try to place the remnants in a place where they will not be in the way. Cigars unlike cigarettes are fully biodegradable.
- bitL 8y agoGet an air purifier with that portable ashtray you need anyway...
- Thriptic 8y agoIs your suggestion really to spend hundreds of dollars on something I rarely use so someone on the street who I don't know won't be transiently offended by a discretely placed piece of small, biodegradable plant matter? Sorry, but expecting people to do that is not realistic.
- bitL 8y agoMore like $50, they already have HEPA filter you need. If you can't tell yourself no, at least improve your health and health of others in a passive way.
- soneil 8y ago
- Al-Khwarizmi 8y agoHonestly I have always just attributed it to most smokers being rude and selfish. The same reason why they never bother to ask if it's OK to start emitting poisonous smoke near you.
- state_less 8y agoFrom the article: In one focus group cited in industry documents, smokers said tossing their butts to the ground was “a natural extension of the defiant/rebellious smoking ritual.”
- KozmoNau7 8y agoIn addition to ignorance about the non-biodegradable nature of cigarette butts, I think it's very much a case of egocentric pseudo-macho faux-rebellion against society. It comes from the same mindset as diesel truck owners rolling coal on cyclists and people in hybrid cars, and destruction of public property (park benches, trash cans and such). Some people either just don't give a shit about other people, or are actively antagonistic.
- hossbeast 8y ago"diesel truck owners rolling coal on cyclists and people in hybrid cars". What does this mean?
- KozmoNau7 8y ago"Rolling coal" is deliberately tuning a diesel engine (by increasing the amount of fuel in relation to air) to make it emit large amount of sooty smoke on acceleration. Any particulate filters and other emissions equipments is usually also removed. It's a well-known term among car enthusiasts, I didn't consider that it probably isn't as well-known among people who are not car enthusiasts :-) The intention is to "stick it to the environmentalists", by deliberately and visually polluting as much as possible, and by blowing this sooty smoke right at perceived environmentalists, ie. people on bicycles or in hybrid cars. In other words, trying to be as much of an asshole as possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
- llampx 8y agoI would like people like these to spend some time in a heavily polluted city like New Delhi, Mexico City or Shanghai/Beijing, to figure out if this is really the world they want to live in. smh...
- JeanMarcS 8y agoA personal anecdote: when I was a student in CS, back in the early nineties, I was working in a gas station the WE. A fellow student, now leading IT department in a European airport, was visiting me and we were chatting outdoor, just nearby the little shop I was in to cash. And then he lights a cig. I asked him if he was ok doing that in a gas station, and he responds me something like well, we are far enough (and that was true, but still) And when he finished it, he dropped it on the ground and scratch it with is foot : « You know I’m the one who’ll have to pick it to trash it, and then have to clean the black mark it leaved on the white cement, do you ? » « Oops, sorry » He is a person I respect for a lot of things, and one of the last friend from my student time. But his smoking M.Hyde side never stops to puzzle me.
- andybak 8y ago(WE = weekend - I had to pause to parse that. Two letter abbreviations suck)
- ape4 8y agoWhat do CS and IT stand for - joke ;)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- samstave 8y agoChocolate Shake and International Treaty.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoI believe the US has unilaterally backed out of the International Chocolate Shake Treaty, to the consternation of our global allies.
- JeanMarcS 8y agoSorry about that. It’s (oddly when you think about it) a common abbreviation in French. Yeah, in France we use the English word weekend (amongst a lot of other)
- feelix 8y agoWhen I used to smoke I did not litter butts when I could avoid it, but they are so disgusting (they stink, they make your fingers stink, if you wrap it in some paper or plastic and put it in your pocket your pants will stink) that you just want to get rid of it. Most things are easier to get rid of because you can put them in a bag or something until you come across a trash can.
- adetrest 8y agoThe same could be said about shit, and yet people find ways to not shit whenever and wherever they feel like (extremely rare exceptions aside)
- rndgermandude 8y agoThe number of butts littered in my city in general and at public transport stops in particularly decreased very significantly ever since most public trash cans where upgraded to have a built-in ashtray (whereas previous trash cans explicitly said not to throw in "hot ashes"), and there is a lot more trash cans in general (which also reduced the general amount of littering drastically). Approaching a tram/bus stop, you can always tell from a bit of a distance if the trash can is full, because when it is the immediate area surrounding/beneath it is a sea of cigarette butts. Even then, it seems, while most smokers will NOT take their butts with them and dispose of them properly elsewhere, they will still not just litter everywhere and anywhere, instead "placing" their butts next to the full trash can, maybe to make a statement that at least they tried... The amount of butts littered in the downtown area with all the historic buildings and historic cobblestone streets - but also very busy with most of the bigger item shops there - is extremely low by now, virtually non-existent in most areas, not just because there are ashtray-ized trash cans there too, but also because there is city officers regularly patrolling there, making sure people don't litter in general, beggars/musicians stick by the rules, bike riders don't use the pedestrian only areas, etc. Those patrols will fine you for your flicked butts, EUR 35 on regular streets and EUR 80 when you litter on harder to clean cobblestone IIRC.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago>they are so disgusting (they stink, they make your fingers stink, if you wrap it in some paper or plastic and put it in your pocket your pants will stink) that you just want to get rid of it. This is very true and highlights how addictive nicotine is. We’re willing to light these things on fire and breathe it into our lungs but are disgusted by the remnants and feel a compulsion to immediately discard it.
- tlarkworthy 8y agoYes, diacarding butts by stamping on them was the social norm way before environmentalism was a thing (like 1900s), and such it has its own cultural inertia passed down between smoking generations. Stamping on them was considered best practice to prevent fire i think. I stopped doing it though 2010ish once i realized they don't break down (now i dont smoke).
- KozmoNau7 8y agoDiscarding an old-fashioned filterless cigarette like that is (probably) not too bad. There are nasty compounds in the tobacco, but it's all biodegradable, relatively quickly. The main problem is the cigarette butts from filter cigarettes, which have been the standard for decades. It's kinda stupid anyway. Smoking a known harmful substance, but oh let me filter it through this little piece of cellulose fiber wadding.
- koolba 8y agoWhen something is taxed as much as cigarettes, it leads to a sense of entitlement for the user and an assumption that the cleanup cost is baked into the taxes.
- TomMarius 8y agoIn my country it actually is. When I tell people to clean up after themselves they say "I just paid the government to do so". One day I will purchase a fleet of Boston Dynamics' SpotMini and the thing will bark loudly and follow the person until they take it and throw it into an ashtray. Public shaming must work, if not, what else could?
- 8note 8y agoyour robots can pick up the butts, and deliver them to the smoker's house
- culot 8y agoThat could lead to real change: drastic increase in tobacco taxes that only abate if cigarette waste drastically diminishes. "Here's an extra $3 per pack tax that will stay in effect until cigarette waste is no longer an issue."
- vbuwivbiu 8y agoUnless people object to it, the behavior will continue. I'm that guy who'll tell someone who drops a cigarette butt to pick it up; to which the response is usually indignation or they ignore me, I figure at least I annoyed them.
- snarfy 8y ago> I figure at least I annoyed them And this is why they continue to do it. You get a response of indignation when you order random strangers in a free society how to behave. You'll get better results if you use guilt instead of demands.
- vbuwivbiu 8y agono it's not - they do it because nobody says anything. If you do nothing you're implicitly accepting their behavior
- jorgesborges 8y agoThe way you say something is important though. Say something, but don't scold another adult like a child and tell them what to do. Your strategy is way less likely to be successful and may even instigate physical confrontation. Ask them how it's different from littering. It's probably an unconscious habit. Tell them it upsets you personally and that it's harmful to the environment.
- vbuwivbiu 8y agoI guess one could say something neutral like "litter" or "pollution" i.e. only label the problem without passing judgement
- culot 8y agoUnless there is a crackdown with real consequences people won't stop littering. It's too convenient, most will have to be forced to abate. I would welcome a law enforcement branch that patrols the streets to prevent and punish these sorts of offenses. You can enact law after law, but if there's no enforcement then change is going to be elusive.
- raverbashing 8y agoIt would be interesting to have a push for making it biodegradable, or who knows, maybe they can be recycled or just incinerated for energy
- jyriand 8y agoYou see every other smoker do it and you think, what’s the point? and you just throw it away. I can’t carry it in my pocket. If trashcan is in visible sight, I’m ok with walking little bit to get rid of it. But usually it’s the case that there isn’t any good way to dispose the sigaret butt. I remember when I started smoking I never littered the street, I took extra steps to get it into nearest trashcan, but three years later I have changed.
- snarfy 8y agoPeople are assholes to smokers. Like, it's socially acceptable to be assholes to smokers these days. I've had random people on an almost daily basis harass me for smoking. Flicking my butts on the ground was a big fuck you to all of the non smokers that harassed me.
- loa-in-backup 8y agoYeah, see - I've had a great deal of experience with smokers, including my close friend past me. People who smoke get high on tobacco, which makes them feel good. Right? Well, it makes them feel good even when they're crapping all around them and then they're all surprised.
- slazaro 8y agoBeing an asshole to assholes... makes you an asshole regardless.
- snarfy 8y agoIt's a vicious cycle. That's kind of my point. Smokers are assholes because they were harassed. Non-smokers harass smokers because they are polluting assholes.
- darkpuma 8y agoYour theory falls apart when you remember that smokers were littering and smoking next to pregnant women from the very beginning, generations ago, before they started to get any social pushback at all. Smokers have always behaved like this, their behavior predates the reaction against it. Being inconsiderate comes as naturally to a smoker as singing does to a songbird.
- Nomentatus 8y agoAn essential part of civility is pointing out acts of incivility. In contrast, many moderns seem to believe that merely acknowledging the possibility of incivility, is itself the height of incivility. But that's nihilism, not civility.
- odiroot 8y agoThis is such a ridiculous and disgusting thing here in Berlin. University educated people from (seemingly) good homes smoke the cigarettes and immediately chuck them out on the streets. Sometimes not even caring if they still burn. This is my friends, my coworkers, policemen, etc. Whenever I openly question their behaviour they usually respond (quite proudly): "The city is our big ashtray".
- sumedh 8y agoWell if you ask people from developing countries you will get a familiar answer that its someone else's job to clean up the street not mine.
- standardUser 8y agoFormer smoker here and guilty of throwing many butts on the ground even though I find any other form of litter unthinkable. When I was much younger I believed that cigarette butts biodegraded in a couple years. No big deal, right? I distinctly remember reading this on a sign at a campsite when I was about 18. Turns out, that's an ideal scenario and butts can take up to 10 years to break down naturally, and even then various "degraded" toxins are still present in the environment indefinitely. But that campsite sign was enough to fuel 15 years of cognitive dissonance that allowed me to toss butts on the ground like they were pieces of old lettuce. That, and the mind-bending power of nicotine addiction, which is vastly more powerful than most people realize.
- GordonS 8y agoThanks for explaining, and I really don't mean to kick you while you're down here, but even if butts did degrade in 2 years, that means they're lying around a long time for birds or animals to eat or choke on them.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mikekchar 8y agoI think this is really the issue when addressing these kinds of pollution problems. It's hard for people to prioritise their actions because they don't understand the relative importance of the consequences. When they hear "problem X is mitigated by Y" they think the issue has been solved, even though there are several other much more serious problems that they didn't know about. Quite frequently I have found that well meaning environmentalists complicate matters by focusing attention on issues that are less important. Being motivated to make a positive difference and being educated on the best courses of action is not necessarily correlated unfortunately. When you throw bad actors into that mix, it gets so confusing that even the most determined and educated can get muddled.
- Nomentatus 8y agoDon't expect current butts to break down - the fibers are plastic, now.
- bostik 8y agoSecond-order tangent incoming. Back in the 1990s, when smoking inside was still allowed, a bar in Finland had a problem with people tossing their cigarette butts to the wide urinal in mens' toilet. Of course it was constantly clogged. Tired of the disgusting cleaning routine, the owners eventually found an approach that helped. They put a new plaque on the wall above the urinal: "If you piss cigarette butts, please consult your doctor."
- blondin 8y agoumm yes. no idea the butt was not bio-degradable. also i don't just toss the butt everywhere i can. i learned that many unexpected fires were due to ciggs.
- thebeefytaco 8y agoAs a smoker, that's always the last choice for me. I'll usually hold onto the butt until I find a trash can, or use a pocket smell-proof ash tray instead. They will eventually biodegrade, but it just looks trashy to have them on the ground.
- wuliwong 8y agoI'm an ex-smoker and I felt I was in the minority of smokers that would roll out the tobacco and put the butt in a trashcan or my pocket until I got to a trashcan. My older brother did the same thing, so I probably was influenced more heavily by my family norms. It is slightly inconvenient and you wind up with even stinkier hands and smelly pockets using that method which might explain why people don't do it. Recently I was with a friend smoking on my porch and he flicked his butt into my front yard. There was an ashtray right next to him which he had used previously. He had also smoked on my porch a number of times before. He is liberal friend and pretty vocal about it though I don't recall him speaking much about environmental concerns. I don't really have an explanation, my guess is that it's a number of factors. I would chalk the scenario on the porch up to muscle memory and possibly being lost in conversation. I think that the small size is the main thing. It is not acceptable to toss any sizable piece of garbage on the street.
- pieterhg 8y agoI'm stupid but when I used to smoke as a teen in Netherlands it was NORMAL to throw them on the street and sometimes step on them. I imagined back then they'd biodegrade (eg rot). Obviously they didn't. Don't smoke anymore so that's nice.
- duncan-donuts 8y agoFormer smoker (who still smokes occasionally) — I think there’s also some hive mind with it as well. I started smoking as a teenager and never really considered the effect of throwing butts on the ground. It’s just what I saw everyone else doing. If I smoke now I always put my cigarette out and throw the butt away.
- mirimir 8y agoIt's the old "dilution is the solution to pollution" mantra. The world seems so huge, and a cigarette butt so small. It's obviously a fallacy. Because there are just so damn many people. What persists are the mouthpiece (plastic) and filter (synthetic fiber). Tobacco degrades very quickly, and paper within a year or so. So when I smoked, I never left butts behind. For one thing, I was typically short of money, so I kept the tobacco in a small bag. I mainly smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, and typically balled up the paper, and put it in a pocket. Sometimes I just dropped the paper, I admit. And sometimes I even saved it, for reuse. But I've also made the argument that people are quite comfortable polluting in ~invisible ways. For example, let's say that there's a road full of motor vehicles. And someone flicks out a butt. Fellow drivers will typically grumble, or yell at them. But they don't realize that they're all polluting far more, through emissions of SO2, NOx, CO2, hydrocarbons, particulates, and so on.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 8y agoFormer smoker as well. What else are you going to do with a cigarette butt? Most cars don't have ashtrays anymore. If there is a proper way for me to dispose of a cigarette within a one block radius (some sort of trash receptacle) I will do it. But most people certainly aren't going to keep smelly, tar-filled, stain causing cigarette butts in their pockets, purses, etc. or on their person for any length of time. And I've never seen anyone with Not all of the butts end up as litter, but proper disposal still means they go to landfills. Recycling options are still extremely limited. The only one I've heard of is a mail-in recycling program. Most Unless manufacturers develop a more recyclable cigarette, the best smokers can do is to make sure their butts are properly disposed of in ashtrays, receptacles, and trashcans. The biggest issue IMO is the makeup of the butts themselves. Most butts are made of cellulose acetate, a non-biodegradable plastic. I don't know if it's cost effective to make a recyclabe butt. If one could, perhaps a cigarette butt deposit similar to CRV on bottles would change behavior. It would not only alter the consumer behavior but would encourage smokers and nonsmokers alive to comb the streets, beaches, etc. for butts further cleaning out streets. Otherwise, I don't think it's too much to ask for manufactureres/consumers to pony up the extra cost for a degradable cigarette butt instead of externalizing the cost to all of us for this admittedly disgusting habit.
- fixvzbdjzis 8y agoA mere speculation: Until 40 years ago cigs didn’t have filters. Just tobacco wrapped in thin paper. Which made them very bio-degradable. Tossing a butt like that is more benign than tossing a peach pit. They’d been that way for maybe 100 years while the smoking culture formed. Either way, I think cigarette butts stick out as litter because of our modern aversion to them and smokers. They’re pretty sterile, do biodegrade and are small. Unlike the liquor bottles that seem to litter any college town.
- smoker4Serious 8y agoBecause we are trying to die, and simply do not give a fuck. Feed that into your facebook suicide watch/dark tetrad NLP algorithm, and use it as a political impetus for a smoking prohibition bill, and behavior modification after school program. Save the world from it’s final free thought. #YOLO
- javagram 8y agoNot a smoker, but I was personally surprised when other people told me they'd have no compunction against discarding an apple core or other similar biodegradable trash on the ground. Given that some people believe cigarettes are also biodegradable, that attitude may explain it. As a society, we've also moved away from having appropriate storage for discarded cigarette trash - ash trays are no longer standard in anything and were already becoming a curiosity more than a decade ago. I assume cigarettes in a normal trash bin present a fire hazard and can't be disposed of there.
- bobbean 8y agoI honestly don't care. I've always known they last for years, I know they end up all over the place, and that it's disgusting, but I don't care. I'll throw it away if I'm close to a trashcan, ashtray, etc, but otherwise I just flick it away and go about my business. I never litter otherwise, I always chase down trash if the wind takes it from my hands, and I pissed when I see someone throw trash on the ground. When I was a kid, I put my chewed gum in my pocket without a wrapper because I didn't want someone to step on it. I like to think I'm considerate to the world and the people I share it with. I never smoke next to someone unless they say it's okay, otherwise I find somewhere else to go, or just don't smoke. There's just something about throwing butts on the ground, I can't get myself to feel bad. I know I'm doing something wrong, and I know I should feel guilty, but I don't. Guess that feeling goes for smoking as well... (I apologise for this intoxicated ramble, a few of the other people who responded to you had irked me)
- Synaesthesia 8y agoQuote from article: A leading tobacco industry academic, a California lawmaker and a worldwide surfing organization are among those arguing cigarette filters should be banned. The nascent campaign hopes to be bolstered by linking activists focused on human health with those focused on the environment. “It’s pretty clear there is no health benefit from filters. They are just a marketing tool. And they make it easier for people to smoke" I used to smoke rolled cigarettes with mild tobacco without filters (thankfully quit) but I thought they were just as mild as filtered cigarettes. Smokers anyway self-modulate how much they inhale.
- jcoffland 8y agoI smoked both when I was younger and dumber. Unfiltered cigarettes turn your fingers, lips and teeth brown.
- adetrest 8y agoFiltered cigarettes do too, just slower. Look at people who've been smoking for a decade or two: their nails are yellow, their teeth are yellow, the hand holding the cigarette also has visible damage.
- notyourwork 8y agoI think this is more specific to the tobacco and not the premise of whether it or isn't filtered. People who chew tobacco have similar yellowing of their fingers they use to pinch.
- menzoic 8y agoBy mass or quantity?
- jobigoud 8y agoThis reads as a good news somehow, because it sounds like a solvable problem.
- narag 8y agoI quit years ago, so not sure but, don't vaporizers are much more convenient and less harming (avoiding tar)? Guess price is worse or I don't understand why they haven't wiped out cigarrettes.
- krisroadruck 8y agoLess harmful yes, more convenient no. You can grab a pack of cigarettes at any gas station but vaping requires a little more planning in most cases. You have to find and go to a specialty shop (vape shop) or order online. This probably doesn't sound like a huge deal but if you've been smoking for a decade + and are used to a refill being as simple as dropping into any corner store you don't develop the habit of planning ahead. Also while there was a brief moment in time where switching to vaping gave you the ability to go back inside, that was pretty much wiped out within 2 or so years of the devices gaining popularity as people treat vapers just as shitty as they treat smokers, perhaps even more so. As to price, it can go either way depending on how you do it. If you are picking up eJuice by the bottle you can actually save quite a bit of money compared to traditional cigarettes. If you are using a pod system like JUUL you either break even or lose money in comparison. I kind of switch back and forth because while the juice option is cheaper its also messier and more inconvenient, where something like a JUUL is a lot closer to the experience of a regular cigarette. Tiny stick in your pocket with disposable pods vs giant eVapeDick that needs you to stop and disassemble it to fill it or change out the atomizer and blows giant unnecessary clouds. Source: 25 year smoker, switched to vaping in 2010.
- metaphor 8y agoThat's because it's a thinly veiled ad for a San Diego-based startup, which the "news" agency failed to disclose as much.
- jason_slack 8y agoThere is a company, TerraCycle, that has a cigarette recycling program: https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/collection-programs?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=cigarette&location= https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/collection-programs?utf8=%E... Fun fact, this same company had a tv show: https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/human-resources-season-1/id891111356 https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/human-resources-season... More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraCycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraCycle
- jcoffland 8y agoBut last week it was fishing gear. Although, it's bullshit that so many smokers think it's perfectly OK to throw their butts just about anywhere.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoI think nothing should beat plastics used for food /bevs, but who knows.
- fyfy18 8y agoIn the UK it can be met with a £80 fine but I've never heard of anyone (other than the sensationalist news articles in the likes of The Sun) ever getting hit with it. I guess it's not worth the red tape for police to hand out fines.
- friendly_chap 8y agoI have been hit with it in London... so it definitely exists. Makes friday drinks (and being stupid and inconsiderate) way more expensive (it was £85). I always thought cigarette butts were something that are harmless and break down easily.
- megablast 8y agoI know people who were hit with it, and I don't feel sorry for them at all.
- DanBC 8y ago> I guess it's not worth the red tape for police to hand out fines. It's not normally police who issue the penalty notice, but local council staff. This means there's a lot of variation across the country. Some councils outsource this to companies who are a bit too vigorous in giving penalty notices. The aim is to prevent litter, not to raise revenue, so they're supposed to give you a chance to pick up your litter to avoid the fine but some don't do that. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fixed-penalty-notices-issuing-and-enforcement-by-councils https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fixed-penalty-notices-issuing-an... The advice about when to, and when not to, issue FPNs covers the point about giving people the opportunity to pick up litter: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/enforcement-officers-issuing-fixed-penalty-notices https://www.gov.uk/guidance/enforcement-officers-issuing-fix...
- chewz 8y agoI have heard that throwing a cigarette butt in a water makes 1 cubic meter of water toxic. Can't provide a source though - someone told me that when sailing together. Toxicity of cigarette butts, and their chemical components, to marine and freshwater fish[1] [1] - https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i25 https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/Suppl_1/i25
- Hydraulix989 8y agoWon’t be surprised if plastic quickly surpasses cigarette butts. Literally everything is plastic, meanwhile the shift is away towards electronics like JUUL.
- kevcampb 8y agoThe Ocean Conservancy report has been cited by quite a few articles now, and it pains me every time I see it. As ever, the conclusions drawn are quite misleading. 1) The source of the data is cleanup on beaches, not ocean trash. If anything it's more likely to be representative of items discarded on beaches or waterways. 2) Cigarette butts are greatest purely in number of individual pieces, not in terms of weight or volume. The following paper reports fishing nets to be the largest contributor to ocean plastic (by volume). Cigarette butts aren't even worthy of a mention in their report (see Supplementary Table 4 which lists the top 5 items per item size group). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w
- shireboy 8y agoThen it was also 10 Asian rivers that account for most plastic: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... I guess I understand it is a hard problem to calculate, but it is an area where I wish the approach was more reasoned and less governed by fad and hype. Sure clean and prevent straws and cigarette butts if that’s really a problem, but divvy our resources in proportion to where data says the issues are...
- alistairSH 8y agoThe Asian rivers was something I learned fairly recently. It wasn't a big shock, but it wasn't obvious either. Do you know if the report also broke down the rivers by size and waterfront population? IE, do the communities along those Asian rivers pollute more than those in the US or EU, or are they simply the largest rivers in the world by volume and/or local population? (Yes, I know the Ganges in filthy)
- deanCommie 8y agoI imagine, being in China, the pollution is also an externality of the manufacturing for the entire world that Europe/US is happy to occur in China instead of locally.
- ada1981 8y agoI wonder what a world where molecular level tagging of products combined with penalties for illegal disposal would look like? I’ve also been seeing JUUL butts / fake USB drives piling up all over NYC. They really ought to have a desposit or recycling program for those.
- jngreenlee 8y agoHonk + Thumbs Down at any driver you see tossing one out the window. Public shaming (not anger like a middle finger) can be very effective. That said, this is probably 90% China as we saw with the ocean plastics source data. Not sure if this approach would work there.
- CrowFly 8y agoAnd yet they want to ban straws.
- treebeard901 8y agoIs the plan now to add a layer of juul pods?
- qwerty456127 8y agoWhy do people even smoke cigarettes when there are vapes for those who just want to inhale and exhale a cloud getting nicotine and cigars for those who want to enjoy real tobacco? Cigarettes are disgusting, toxic, expensive (as compared to a supply of liquid) and inconvenient (as you can't just inhale at any time you want). Why non-biodegradable cig filters are still not outlawed is another mystery.
- uxp100 8y agoCigarettes taste like burning paper, and at their best smell just OK, but most smokers aren't walking around with cigarillos, despite the better ones tasting and smelling very nice. It's about nicotine delivery, and even the new hit with the kids, Juul, seems not as nice as a cigarette to me as a very infrequent nicotine user. Maybe box mods are different, I've only every tried the types of vapes you can get at tobacco shops and gas stations and such. As a side note, I'm surprised snuff isn't more popular. It gives a noticeable but not overwhelming stimulation, discretely, doesn't have the cultural connotations or need to spit of chew, and seemed a little milder too. I guess putting stuff up your nose has it's own connotations. I also don't even know where you can buy it. Certainly not a gas station.
- jacobush 8y agoSnuff taken the way I know it, under the upper lip, gives a slower hit but a much stronger hit than cigarettes. What I wonder is about the new "vape-like" pens which heats (real) tobacco but doesn't burn it. If that is similar enough to cigarettes to win cigarette smokers over. I would think so, but I'm not a real smoker (only tried a few times) so can't offer my own anecdata.
- uxp100 8y agoIf it's anything like weed, than actually less similar to cigarettes than existing vapes. Sniffing snuff is much stronger than cigarettes but less intense I would say. Like if you don't smoke a cigarette could give you the spins, but in a few minutes you're ok. I have had a few sniffs of snuff, and then a few hours later still felt a bit up, and had trouble sleeping. Unlike chewing or dipping though, I think it's hard to accidentally have way too much.
- EamonnMR 8y agoI wonder, will the same people who demanded that plastic straws go away now attack smokers with similar zeal?
- Jach 8y agoProbably not, because the large majority of homeless people are smokers, and they've got enough troubles.
- systematical 8y agoHow is it 2019 and tobacco is not illegal?
- chiefalchemist 8y agoYea. Ocean pollution is a problem. But using amount / volume collected is (for me) a misleading metric. Plaatics (floating everywhere)? Micro-plastics? Chemicals (that can't be collected)? All come to mind. At the risk of sounding like a cynic / conspiracy theorist, this particular take on the issue feels as if it came out of the covert comms dept of Big Oil.
- codecamper 8y agoWould it be possible to embed an rf (or otherwise) ID into every single piece of non organic matter? Some kind of code that gets assigned to you when you buy the items. And if those items are found in nature, then you are fined. Possible?
- codecamper 8y agoAnother way to deal with this problem is to simply get rid of filters. Let people that smoke die from cancer earlier & maybe fewer people will smoke. Maybe offer a re-usable filter?
- SuoDuanDao 8y agoNow I'm imagining those long cigarette holders from the classic movies making a comeback. Funny image.
- DoctorOetker 8y ago1) The most effective portable ashtray I saw, was when it was handed out on a festival: they were the classic analog camera film canisters, they close really airtight. To adress the dumping of cigeratte filters not buds, why not simply put ever larger return deposits (like many nations have on certain glass bottles etc) on the filters? If your pack of cigarettes cost say $20, but $30 dollars extra for the filters, then smokers will keep their filters and turn them in when they buy their new pack. OK, a lot of people behave irrationally when drinking while smoking, but some of the present smokers will still be cheap enough to collect all the filters that people leave in the local ashtray instead of in their portable ones... The difference is between $50 or $20 for the next pack of cigarettes. Use the same per filter price for loose filters for the people who roll cigarettes. 2) I am addicted to smoking, and smoke cigarettes without filter. As far as I understand both paper and tobacco biodegrade. On the street I throw the butts (not filters!) in the gutters, preferentially through the grid straight into the sewer. I have had many discussions with other smokers, and there is a guaranteed subject that returns: whenever the taxes and hence prices of tobacco products rise a fraction of the previous cost. Just like the smokers are addicted to the cigarettes, the tobacco companies and the government are "addicted to the smokers" or rather: exploit the smokers. Over ten years that I smoke the price has more than tripled perhaps quadrupled (Belgium, Europe). The justification behind increasing the prices is always to encourage people to stop smoking. The discussion I have with these other smokers whenever the price has risen always ends with the same conclusion: they don't want us to stop smoking, they just want to extract more money by using small increments, and letting us get accustomed to the new price. We always reach the conclusion it would be better to not let the price rise for a couple of years and then double the price of tobacco products. A lot of people would stop simply because they don't economically agree to the new price, and many who want to stop but have a hard time because their friends are still smoking would have an easier time because it would synchronize our efforts to stop smoking. Obviously that will lead to a substantial loss of income to both tobacco industry and government, who are sponsoring various cancer treatments (both tobacco related and unrelated cancers) with the income from tobacco products. The "beautiful" aspect is that in contrast to non-addictive products the lobbyists for tobacco companies don't even need to bribe government, since government has been co-opted through taxation. If we really wish to clear up the cigarette filters, stop smoking, and lower future health care costs we should look at the "half-life" of cigarettes/euro, and keep the price constant but double it every such half-life. That would really give all smokers a memento mori to reconsider our habits, ... but similarily it would also force tobacco industry and government to kick off the lucrative income from smokers! As a smoker (but otherwise a very stubborn person) I can tell you we don't have the spine to quit, certainly not on the basis of a 5% increasee in price! Whack us with a price doubling! Then nearly all my friends who smoke, and unknown people I may meet at performances, events, bars would stop in synchrony. 3) Wasn't the mass introduction of filters at least partially a marketing ploy minimize the health concerns as they started to rise in public perception? How effective are filters really? Are those smokers who were intimidated into buying more expensive and "healthier" cigarettes by both industry and family (indirectly still industry) really the cause of the current widespread pollution of these filters? Or were it the marketers, similar to all the pollution of plastic water bottles? A marketing ploy in the quest for money, with the side effect of polluting nature?
- Nomentatus 8y agoI have something of a rule re friends - if I see them doing something I would simply never, ever do (for ethical reasons) then whether it's a small thing or a big one; I end the friendship. I know a much bigger ethical lapse will be coming. When I've bent this rule, as I did for one fellow I liked a lot who tossed his butts wherever, I found out a couple of years later that I'd have been much better off dropping him out of my life the first time he tossed a butt.
- beerlord 8y agoWhy don't countries regulate the butts to ensure they are more readily biodegradable?