Reducing Litter from Cigarettes
Green Home, Safety and Security, Thinking Green, Video by Danny Lipford
Cigarettes are extremely hazardous to everybody’s health, smoker and non-smoker alike. We’ve all seen people carelessly throw cigarette butts on the ground or out a car window. Besides being an obvious fire hazard, these nasty little things take 10 to 15 years to decompose, and during that time, chemicals like cyanide, arsenic and lead leach into the ground.
Don’t think that’s very much? Over 360 BILLION cigarettes were smoked in the U.S. last year. Even if only one tenth of one percent were discarded on the ground, that’s 300 thousand cigarette butts, literally enough to make you sick, leaking poison into the ground, contaminating water supplies.
Equally disturbing is the fact that cigarette waste represents over 30% of all the litter in the U.S. So, if you’re still foolish enough to smoke, do yourself and the rest of the world a favor…keep your butts where they belong.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
I don’t hide the fact that I detest cigarettes. It’s extremely hazardous to everybody’s health–smoker and non-smoker alike. We’ve all seen people carelessly throw cigarette butts on the ground or out a car window. Besides being an obvious fire hazard, these nasty little things take ten to fifteen years to decompose, and during that time, chemicals like cyanide, arsenic and lead leach into the ground. Don’t think that’s very much? Over 360 BILLION cigarettes were smoked in the U.S. last year. Even if only one tenth of one percent were discarded on the ground, that’s 300 thousand cigarette butts, literally enough to make you sick, leaking poison into the ground, contaminating water supplies. Equally disturbing is the fact that cigarette waste represents over 30% of all the litter in the U.S. So, if you’re still foolish enough to smoke, do yourself and the rest of the world a favor…keep your butts where they belong.
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