If discarded cigarette filters can become plastic building pallets, so much the better, but keeping cigarette butts off our streets, sidewalks and beaches is reason enough to support the recycling project launched by the Surfrider Foundation.
The South Island chapter of the environmental organization has installed a canister for disposal of cigarette butts on Victoria鈥檚 Broad Street, and has ordered six more. The project follows the example of Vancouver, which launched a project last fall in which 110 cigarette-recycling canisters were to be placed around that city. Separated from tobacco and paper, which can be composted, the filters can be used for such things as building pallets.
Those ubiquitous cigarette butts are not just an unsightly mess 鈥� they鈥檙e toxic. The filters are made of cellulose acetate, which does not biodegrade and contains dangerous compounds, in addition to the toxins filtered out of tobacco smoke. Researchers have found that one cigarette butt soaked for four days in a litre of water will kill smelt and minnows.
Yet to some smokers, the world is their ashtray. They think nothing of tossing a butt onto the sidewalk, out a car window or on a beach. Part of the problem could be that with the decline in the number of smokers over the years, ashtrays are rare in public places. While that helps send a message about the unacceptability of public smoking, smokers should still have somewhere to discard smoking materials. Providing recycling canisters would help.
If we can鈥檛 eliminate cigarettes altogether, at least we can keep them from littering the landscape.
