Blue smoke billows up from my terrace. After the last puff, a flesh-coloured filter is shot thoughtfully into the garden, among the roses and rhododendrons. I feel a jolt. Messily I find the cigarette butts in my garden, on the street and on the beach. ‘Ah well, that will decompose anyway,’ is the standard response to my frowning gaze. A comment that makes me gag, because when it decays, it's bitchy to think anything about it.
My shock turns to shock when I read the dirty truth about cigarette filters on CNN's site. What turns out: cigarette filters contain cellulose acetate, a plastic that decomposes only under extreme conditions. In my garden and on the beach, filters are actually not degradable. There, they slowly disintegrate into smaller and smaller particles that you eventually cannot see with the naked eye. It looks like the filter has decayed, but the plastic is still there. It's in the soil and in the water. And who knows in my roses and the frogspawn.
There are a mind-boggling number of cigarette butts lying around the world. It is the most discarded plastic item. Some 6 trillion cigarettes cross the counter every year. 90% of them have a filter containing plastic. All together, this generates more than a million tonnes of plastic waste. Even at clean ups on Dutch tourist beaches, cigarette butts are the most frequently encountered plastic waste. And indeed: when I trudge barefoot through the loose beach sand, I regularly feel a cigarette butt between my toes.
Cigarette filters contain not only plastic, but also a cocktail of toxins: arsenic (rat poison!), lead, nicotine and pesticides. When the discarded filter disintegrates, those chemicals seep into the ground or water. At a university in the US, they did a little experiment: they let fish swim in water in which cigarette butts had been floating for 24 hours (one filter per litre). After a few days, half the fish were dead.
Filters were devised to improve smokers' health. They do not, yet another study shows. In fact, the filter seems to increase the risk of lung cancer.
If only it were bitchy to find cigarette filters messy. Retrospectively, I would accept all the discarded filters between the roses and rhododendrons and also the cigarette butts between my toes with a relaxed smile. Unfortunately, the truth is much messier than I thought.
If only it were bitchy to find cigarette filters messy. Retrospectively, I would accept all the discarded filters between the roses and rhododendrons and also the cigarette butts between my toes with a relaxed smile. Unfortunately, the truth is much messier than I thought.
Fortunately, the solution is also there for the taking: ban the filter cigarette. That will benefit everything and everyone.
Renske Postma
Photo: Jeroen Gosse
