APRIL PARKS AND REC BUTT FULL
“They’re made of non-biodegradable plastic and full of hazardous waste that harms both the Earth and the ocean.” “They’re the No 1 most littered item in the world,” said Silverstein. In an ocean brimming with plastic litter, cigarette butts stand out as a particularly potent form of waste, said Mitch Silverstein, the policy coordinator for the San Diego chapter of the ocean conservation organisation Surfrider. “The cigarette butts themselves look like little fish,” said Martin, citing a photo snapped on a Florida beach in 2019 that showed a Black Skimmer gingerly feeding a cigarette butt to its chick.ĭisturbing Photo Shows a Black Skimmer Feeding a Cigarette Butt to Its Chick #audubonsociety #nature #birding #birds #audubon #earth /m6nIJqQUZ9- istockhistory August 2, 2019 “Plastics don’t break down over time, they photodegrade, which means that the light breaks them into smaller pieces but they don’t eventually go away,” says Martin.Īs these bits of plastic and microplastic are carried along coastlines and waterways, there is little to prevent them from becoming food for animals. These plastic filters – estimated to be a component in more than 90% of commercial cigarettes – are made of cellulose acetate. “Many people don’t know that the cigarette filters themselves are made out of plastic fibres.” “It is part of the plastic problem,” said Martin. Whether flicked on to beaches, tossed in parks or dropped on to streets, many of the tiny, lightweight butts end up in bodies of water, swept there by rainfall and storm water systems.įew are aware of their persistent and potentially harmful effects on marine environments, says Kari Martin of New Jersey-based Clean Ocean Action.
APRIL PARKS AND REC BUTT CRACK
The move has catapulted Spain to the forefront of countries seeking to crack down on what the UN describes as “the most discarded waste item worldwide”: the estimated 4.5tn cigarette butts littered each year. It comes from clothes fibres, released in washing machines, and from nurdles, the building blocks for many plastic goods that are often spilled in their billions from ships, causing as much damage as oil spills (though still not classified as hazardous).Īnd it comes, in huge quantities (representing about a quarter of all microplastic in oceans), from tyre dust – the residue generated as people drive their cars ( and even bicycles) down the street. Then there’s the vast, unseen churn of microplastics – trillions of tiny fibres and beads that are now so much part of our water systems that every week most people drink a credit card’s worth of it.
Some sources of plastic pollution are less obvious, such as cigarette butts and sachets. While bags and food wrappings dominate the shoreline, further out it is abandoned fishing gear and plastic lids. The type of plastic that proliferates through ocean ecosystems depends on where you look. In this series, the Guardian's Seascape project is looking at what is in this plastic avalanche to find out where it comes from, the harm it causes and what can be done to fix it. However, while ocean pollution suggests bobbing plastic bottles or straws, these make up only a fraction of the total.
Plastic even contaminates the air: in many places, it literally rains plastic. More than 8m tonnes pour into the seas every year, spewed out via rivers, dumped on coastlines or abandoned by fishing vessels.
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