After decades of public health campaigns, 5-6 trillion cigarettes are still sold around the world each year. And while we tend to think of cigarette butts and something that will naturally degrade into the Earth (after all, that’s where tobacco comes from), the truth is much more toxic.

It turns out that cigarette butts (and the filters found inside of them) are the most common pollutant of the world’s oceans.

In fact, the Ocean Conservancy’s 32 years of beach cleanups have shown that cigarette butts are the most collected item on the world’s beaches.

Their volunteers have picked up over 60 million of them – that’s more than plastic wrappers, food containers, bottle caps, utensils, and bottles combined!

And most people are misinformed about what these filters are made out of.

While cigarette companies have experimented with making them from paper and other biodegradable materials in the past, they’re actually plastic – cellulose acetate to be exact, which can take more than a decade to decompose.

Yet most people still have the idea that they’re made out of paper and cotton.

Thought plastic straws were a scourge? Well, they are, but cigarettes are worse polluters.

And the worst part? These filters don’t even do what they’re designed to do, which is make smoking “safer” by filtering out some of the tar and nicotine.

“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,” Thomas Novotny, a professor of public health at San Diego State University, told NBC News. “It’s also a major contaminant, with all that plastic waste. It seems like a no-brainer to me that we can’t continue to allow this.”

To reiterate: cigarette filters don’t do anything. They simply create the illusion of a safer cigarette while polluting the planet.

As we know, despite the harms they do, it’s been nearly impossible to regulate the production of cigarettes. Even when we’ve accepted that people will smoke it’s been difficult to keep non-smokers and the planet safe. For example, a New York legislator tried to pass a piece of legislation that would simply allow people to return butts to redemption centers for a rebate, but the idea never even made it out of committee for a vote.

Of course, there are people trying to help.

For example, those who work for non-profits such as the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project, who offer expert assistance to local governments and community organizations about how to help reduce the pollution. According to their research, as many as two-thirds of cigarette filters are dumped irresponsibly each year.

Aside from the plastic, the cigarette butt filters contain synthetic fibers and chemicals that have been found in 70% of seabird and 30% of sea turtles.

There are two main problems here – putting aside the problem of smoking altogether, which is not going away any time soon.

The first is that we dump billions of tons of trash on beaches and in the oceans. After all, out of sight, out of mind. We don’t want to look at the stuff and we certainly don’t want landfills in our backyards. So even those who manage to hit the trash can with their cigarette butts are still contributing to this pollution problem.

But the second problem is that it’s far more common to litter the ground with them.

There, they end up eaten by animals, tracked into homes on shoes, played with by children, or swept into gardens or sewers (which lead to the local water supply). Every second, 137,000 cigarette butts are thrown on the ground in the world.

So they’re not just the most littered thing in the oceans, they’re the most littered item everywhere on earth!

Not convinced?

On April 22, 2018, 203 volunteers in Brussels managed to collect 120,000 cigarette butts IN JUST THREE HOURS.

While we’re still investigating the full impact this kind of waste has on humans, it’s pretty clear that the first step towards a cleaner planet is to get rid of useless cigarette filters altogether. Luckily, many cities are working on initiatives to do just that.

If they aren’t protecting smokers and only serve as a marketing gimmick that pollutes our earth with trillions of pieces of plastic, what’s the point?

And let’s not even get started on their potential for starting fires.

Be sure to scroll down below for a news story with more information.

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Source: NBC News, Leo Not Happy via Facebook, Cigarette Butt Pollution Project