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Comment on Why do smokers specifically seem to be disproportionally bad for littering?

Honest question: what about cigarette butts makes them not biodegradable, exactly? To my vague understanding of what they’re made of, I know them to be cheifly comprised of paper and extract from dried leaves. Even after considering all the other additive compounds in cigs added for taste and effect, I can’t picture a lot of it by mass being forever chemicals like plastics.

That asked, I’m not convinced littering is acceptable even for biodegradable things. Far from all “biodegradable” materials completely disintegrate on a short timescale. Even IF cigarette butts degrade like plain paper and dry leaves, they wouldn’t do it quickly. If it’s a place where even a single smoker haunts multiple times a week, smoking and discarding multiple cigs at a time, they can pile up faster than they disappear.

And that’s not even considering all the toxins that would leech out from the things that will remain at elevated levels for as long as the littering continued.

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Reyali@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The filters are made of plastic cellulose. Once upon a time I believe they were just cotton which would have been fine, but it’s been a long time since that was true.

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conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
They’re a huge source of microplastics in the environment. Tl;Dr they readily break down into microplastics and small plastic filaments.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34139503/

FTA:

Cigarette butts are dangerous pieces of plastic, but are usually not handled properly and consist of more than 15,000 detachable strands of plastic fiber. Discarded cigarette butts may be carried into rivers and lakes, and finally into the ocean. The plastic fibers will continuously release microplastic fibers into the environment. About 300,000 tons of potential microplastic fibers may enter the aquatic environment from this source per annum. Additionally, toxic substances, such as nicotine, carcinogenic tar, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, have strong toxic effect, which will cause serious damage to aquatic organisms.

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- pixelscript@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Of course they contain their own plastic… how am I not surprised…
  
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