I was in a national park this past weekend. Beautiful scenery, gorgeous vistas, and the clearest air anyone could ask for.
Until some jerkass decided it was the perfect time to light up on the trail and then flick his cigarette into the woods. During fire season. Fucking asshole.
I was at some remote sea the other week. Pretty long, steep hike that took me like 3 hours. I just thought that this was probably the moste remote and beautiful place that i have ever seen, and still, there were cigarette buds scattered along the path.
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I went up and punched him in the face. What did you think I did? In this country where people openly carry weapons and are easily triggered
So you shot him? Right call
Addiction or not, someone who doesn’t put their trash where it belongs is disgusting scum.
Especially when that trash can start a fire.
That is why I keep the league of legends icon in the bin 💪
I live in Scotland it’s so damp that you can’t start a fire with fire let alone a cigarette butt.
Two words: plastic filters
It was a vain attempt at humour.
Oh lol, sorry then
You don’t realize how scarce trash cans there are until you start smoking.
That’s why I became enlightened and switched to vaping. Now I can stop worrying about trashcans and just pour chemicals straight into the ground (and into my own pockets). 256 IQ move right there, so smart it overflows back to 0.
When I was still smoking I had a pocket ashtray. Saw them in some random anime a couple of years back and then bought one.
“On your right you can see our newest national heritage, the Elfbar-forest”
I just shoved them back in the pack after scrapping off the cherry if I needed to. It made it smell bad, but didn’t really change the taste of the other smokes.
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smoking is a beautifully executed tax on people via addiction. They created a product they cloak in the terminology of freedom and history, loaded with additional addictive chemicals and pushed it on our youth years ago. It’s not bad enough to kill you or your ability to “produce” but the odds are good it will kill you before you can collect social security and will act as a daily tax as its marked as a luxury good. It’s disgusting for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with the filter or the smell.
Don’t see anything wrong with a cigar or hookah once in a while, cigs are gross though.
I’m just gonna leave this here
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Let me just add the following:
Many smokers never even think about it. It’s the most normal thing in the world to them to just flick their cigarette anywhere. It’s so engrained in their brains that it’s okay to do so, which is the main part of the problem.
Just calling them out on it to make them aware can be a great start.
The problem is that calling them out on this behaviour is usually met with aggression…
That can sadly happen, yeah. I only do it when there’s enough other people around to hear and see it, which also puts extra pressure on them.
My boss literally wanted me to clean up cigarettes that him and several other workers threw on the ground constantly. Keep in mind there’s a cigarette trash can that’s right outside but no one cares to use it. Needless to say, I said fuck no and he didn’t argue lmao.
The first time a smoker would ask…
Blame TV and movies too
Maybe big tobacco as well. I feel bad for someone with an addiction. But choosing to throw waste on streets, sidewalks, or natural places is just rude and gross. Don’t make your problem everyone’s problem.
I don’t see big tobacco adds throwing butts on the ground…
And those candy cigarettes we used to eat
They don’t get thrown on the ground…
I disagree with the title tho. Correlation doesn’t imply causation.
Good point.
Agreed, it was likely they were already dumbasses which lead to them becoming smokers.
A reminder: the filters are basically plastic and will last forever.
Say what you want about the rest, it’s filters which bother me the most.
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Not sure about that list - they don’t “biodegrade”, but they do break down into microplastics, our favourite size of plastic these days.
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I thought they were cotton. TIL.
Cellulose acetate. Yeah.
Interesting.
“cigarette filters take years to be broken down in the open”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate
Not that I doubted you at all, I just wanted to get a bit more detail. The whole article is rather interesting in how we’ve used CA as a society and what happens to it. In some cases, according to the above, the product can be biodegraded using cellulaise and exposure to 280nm or smaller wavelengths of light to promote the process; the cellulaise is only present in very bio-active soil, which isn’t common in places where smokers will be tossing their butts, the filter is usually protected by paper wrap, so even sitting in the open where it can be bombarded with direct sunlight, there’s going to be a significant delay before any UV can reach the CA in the filter.
I’m extrapolating from the Wikipedia article for that last bit… but it’s logically sound. Between the difficulty of UV reaching the CA, plus the absence of any additional substances to aid in the degradation of the CA, it would take substantial time to degrade. Though it’s derived from either cotton or wood cellulose.
It’s fascinating stuff.
I’ve never regularly smoked cigarettes, and I’ve always had an issue with people just flicking their butts wherever they want. Now I have scientific information to support that discomfort, so thanks
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See, that’s exactly why I don’t use an Ash tray or a bin.
I don’t throw it on the ground either. I just swallow it. There is no need to worry about littering or finding somewhere for it that way.
I can’t really comprehend how it got so accepted. Why don’t we punish this behaviour sufficiently if it is observed. Something like 12h of picking up filters would be quite fitting.
How would that be enforced?
Look at Singapore
I think it probably would be enough if smokers just have to fear getting caught because its really not that big of a deal to throw it into the trash.
Presumably by police officers issuing citations for littering and judges imposing sentences that include community service doing litter cleanup.
I love sending in dashcam videos of litterers, instant $400 fine lol
I totally agree with you re: disposing of the end of the cigs. But when you’re outside, do you have an issue with the ash aswell?
I do have a problem with the ash. But I’ll admit that it’s more a conscious one than the emotional antipathy I feel towards the buds. The buds you can at least pick up and discard. But once the ash is on the ground, the pollutants are irretrievably in the environment.
Is it that much of a pollutant? Again just ash, I’m always pretty conscientious to dispose of my filter tips, but never thought the ash was a problem. Does it severely damage plant life? Is ashing in a concrete carpark more acceptable?
Not trying to get facetious here, genuinely trying to find out more.
I couldn’t find anything scientific specifically about cigarette ash, so I’m just reasoning from common sense.
Part of the problem of filter tips are heavy metals. I hypothesize that not all the metals are converted to gas and sucked into the filter while the cigarette is lit. Therefore there must be heavy metals remaining in the ash. These seep into the ground and ground water, whether the ash starts out on a parking lot or in a park.
If that’s dangerous to plant life depends on the plants living there. Tobacco, for instance, seems to handle them well (that’s how the metals get into the ash in the first place: tobacco sucks them out of the ground). “[S]ensitive plants growing in sites with heavy metals exposure show altered metabolism, growth reduction, and reduced biomass production and reduced yield.” [1]
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-41552-5_4
Okay, but are their heavy metals in the ash or just the tips? I use paper tips so I don’t think there is any heavy metal in them, but if it’s in the ash then that’s different. Thank you for looking into it tho.
Technically nature made us and in time we made plastic, so technically nature made plastic… This is all just nature’s fault! Kill it! 😬
I think smokers are unaware, that cigarette filters are plastic. Plastic full of environmental toxins.
I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore but when I did I was fully aware that the tips were disasters in terms of how long they take to break down and their pollution impact, which is why I’d never throw them anywhere that wasn’t an ashtray or a bin.
Now joints, I’ve felt free to when it’s just a bit of paper and organic matter that is pretty much already obliterated just by smooshing it with my shoe.
I don’t smoke anymore either, but when I did I bought pure cotton filters that were biodegradable in case they left the bin somehow.
All the smokers I know pocket their butts and toss them in the garbage later 🤷
I guess they still ash their cigs on the ground, but I don’t really see ash as an issue. Maybe it is, but not to my knowledge
Ash is not as much of an issue, the butts are toxic to wildlife.
My experience is totally opposite, I don’t know a single smoker who disposes of their butts properly.
I can’t speak to quantities or rates, but I see a LOT of cigarette butts on the ground. This meme is right on target, in my experience.
My “favorite” was the time one threw their cigarette butt out the window of their car on a highway and it somehow ended up under the cowl of my windshield, so the smell was being sucked into my car by the ventilation system. And I couldn’t easily get in there to remove it - I needed tools I didn’t have on the road with me. At least it didn’t start a fire.
That’s nasty, I have a nice burn hole in my jacket because someone tossed a lit cigarette out of their window and it landed in my jacket hoodie while riding a motorcycle.
I’ve since quit, but me and my friends would dispose of our butts properly. The problem is like a single asshole can toss 20+ butts in a day. So it’s really obvious when people are shitheads, but you’ll basically never notice people are functioning members of society.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned not knowing rates - I’m sure there are people who do the right thing with them, but the ones that don’t are the ones that are going to stand out.
I did when I smoked. I knew a few others who did as well (maybe only when I was around them idk). But yeah, the vast majority don’t give a fuck.
I hate to say it, but these days it’s kind of a thing mostly underprivileged people do, and these people tend to have bigger problems than being socially and environmentally conscious.
