Keep your butts off the beach!
SAS have been running several high publicity
campaigns across UK beaches to try and encourage
people NOT to drop their cigarette butts on the
beach.
Why?
The Stats
An estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts enter
the environment every year.
In 2003, in a Marine Conservation Society beach
litter survey, 14,659 cigarette ends were found
on 244 UK beaches. That’s an average of 108.7
cigarette ends for each kilometre of beach surveyed,
or one butt every 10 metres.
The Worries
Cigarette filters are made from cellulose acetate,
a plastic that takes years to bio degrade.
Cigarette ends can be mistaken for food and eaten
by marine animals leading to inflammation of the
animal’s digestive system and occasionally
(if they cause a blockage of the gut), death.
Ingestion of cigarette butts can also result
in vomiting and convulsions in young children.
Cigarette filters are designed to absorb tar
and chemicals such as cadmium, lead and arsenic.
These chemicals leach into the water when the filter
reaches the sea. Experiments have shown that just
one cigarette filter is toxic enough to kill water
fleas in eight litres of water (K. Register, 2000.)
The Campaign
Surfers Against Sewage and the Marine
Conservation Society are working together
to highlight the increasing numbers of cigarette
butts ending up on UK beaches, and to promote
the “No Butts on the beach” message
which SAS launched in 2002. The campaign groups
have also been joined in this initiative by Butts
Out, who has provided SAS with a thousand
portable ashtrays.
“We would encourage councils to provide
more cigarette bins along beaches and better
beach signage on the trail of devastation cigarette
butts can cause if left on the beach” Richard
Hardy, SAS Campaigns Director
“People need
to understand that dropping a cigarette butt
is a form of littering, and that trillions of
cigarette ends enter the water environment every
year with potentially harmful consequences” Andrea
Crump, MCS Litter Projects Co-ordinator."
What YOU can do
If you are a smoker then you can take a portable
ashtray/butt bin with you to the beach.
You can
also take part in the Marine Conservation Society
Adopt-a-Beach project to help clean and survey
beach litter and identify the sources of litter
including cigarette butts. |
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