Give us your cigarette butts
A #gopafree (cigarette butt free) world now, not later
You may wonder and question: A planet asphyxiating from all kinds of pollution, have to worry about cigarette butts?
However, yes!
They may not look that dangerous because of their small size and the widely spread, false however, belief that cigarette butts are biodegradable.
They contain plastic!
They are lethal!
They pollute the groundwater, meaning the water that we drink, the seas and the shores.
They kill the fish, the birds and other animals that swallow them.
They poison the environment and our food and have the destruction capacity of mass destruction weapons.
The most dangerous thing about them is that they are perceived to be “innocent”.
It is not our intention to bring fear, what we want is to raise awareness.
We don’t want you to be terrified, but there is no different way to say it.
Humanity is suffering every day from the harmful effects of the cigarette butts.
Luckily, the situation is reversible.
To do it we need awareness and action.
Scientists advise against throwing cigarette butts on the streets or burying them in the sand when we are at the beach.
It is a good start but not enough.
Because even if we don’t do the above, cigarette butts still end at common rubbish dumps and they are proper active time bombs for the environment.
If we want to survive from their threat, we have to neutralise them.
How? Recycle them. Are cigarette butts recyclable? Certainly.
It wasn’t always possible, but now it can be done and we know how.
We need everyone’s cooperation in order to succeed it.
We don’t ask you to do any heavy chore, just give us your cigarette butts.
It is not the pain, it’s the gain. And the way is simple.
The only thing that we ask from you is to put out your cigarettes at special ashtrays, outdoor and indoor.
Give us your cigarette butts!
Smoking kills, we all know that, even the heaviest smokers.
What we don’t know that well is that cigarette butts kill too.
They can kill even those who don’t smoke…
Cigarette butts remain one of the most common forms of environmental pollution as more than 1.3 million tons are produced every year.
In Greece, we produce around 22 billion cigarette butts, something like 3,500 tons, most of which end to our shores.
40% of the garbage collected globally during beach cleaning is cigarette butts.
For a country with seas like ours, this is catastrophic.
Just like the rest of the cigarette, cigarette butts contain an abundance of toxic chemicals that end in the water, forming a threat to the fish and every king of sea life.
Even if the fish do not end in our plate, the meat of some other animal that drank the cigarette butt “enriched with toxic chemicals” water will.
Cigarette butts have plastic filters that go from the drains to the sewers and eventually reach the seas where they release nicotine, benzene, cadmium, acetone, acetic acid, ammonia, arsenic, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hydrocarbons, hydrocyanic acid, lead, methanol, methyl, nitric acid, polonium-210, sulphuric acid, tar and radon.
Cigarette butts often end in the stomach of fish, birds and mammals contaminating them with dangerous chemicals and causing in some cases even their death.
With specific recycling, plastic industrial products are produced from the cigarette butts. The remains of paper, tobacco and ash are composted and turned into fertiliser.
Dumping the cigarette butts to the common rubbish dumps does not solve the problem because the plastic filters have a slow biodegrading rate of 15 years.
Cigarette butts have plastic filters that go from the drains to the sewers and eventually reach the seas where they release nicotine, benzene, cadmium, acetone, acetic acid, ammonia, arsenic, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hydrocarbons, hydrocyanic acid, lead, methanol, methyl, nitric acid, polonium-210, sulphuric acid, tar and radon.
Cigarette butts often end in the stomach of fish, birds and mammals contaminating them with dangerous chemicals and causing in some cases even their death.
With specific recycling, plastic industrial products are produced from the cigarette butts. The remains of paper, tobacco and ash are composted and turned into fertiliser.
Dumping the cigarette butts to the common rubbish dumps does not solve the problem because the plastic filters have a slow biodegrading rate of 15 years.
Even smokers with ecological conscience, confess that they often put off their cigarettes on the pavement or at the beach.
Even smokers with ecological conscience, confess that they often put off their cigarettes on the pavement or at the beach.
DON’T THROW ME AWAY, THINK BEFORE YOU THROW ME, DON’T BURY ME, DON’T DROWN ME