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There is a lot of misinformation out there regarding cigarette butt litter. The biggest myth is that cigarette filters are biodegradable. In fact, cigarette butts are not biodegradable in the sense that most people think of the word. The acetate (plastic) filters can take many years to decompose. Smokers may not realise that their actions have such a lasting, negative impact on the environment.
What happens after that cigarette butt gets casually flicked onto the street, nature trail, or beach? Typically wind and rain carry the cigarette into the water supply, where the toxic chemicals the cigarette filter was designed to trap leak out into aquatic ecosystems, threatening the quality of the water and many aquatic life forms.
Cigarette butts may seem small, but with several trillion cigarette butts littered every year throughout the World, the toxic chemicals add up.
Cigarette butt litter is a growing problem throughout the World, particularly since the introduction of Smoking Laws banning smoking from all indoor areas such as in office buildings, in pubs, cafes, public transport areas and clubs.
With these smoking laws, they did not actually consider what people would do with their cigarette butt litter.
There is little, if any, provision by the law makers in most countries to consider the impact of cigarette butt litter on our environment. To expect smokers to change a habit of disposal overnight was always going to cause concern.
Most people, smokers and non smokers alike, are happy to abide by the laws but the question begs
"who is responsible for the cigarette butt litter?"
Infrastructure needs to be provided in an organised and promoted fashion by the communities at local body level as well from the central government level for this cigarette butt litter education and environment awareness to take effect.
Smokers are not necessarily dirty people but when there are no disposal facilities available to them, what can they do? They can not put butt litter in normal rubbish bins as this might cause a fire.
Like most litter, if there are receptacles available, people have no excuse to drop their litter, including cigarette butt litter.
Countries are now initiating instant fines for people who litter, with cigarette butt litter bugs, not being excused.
