News from the Noteworthy from Tobacco-Free Communities: Delaware, Otsego & Schoharie

Tobacco Waste Harmful to Environment

Earth Day offers the chance to raise awareness of behavior and practices that harm the environment but were not realized previously. Most people know tobacco use is bad for your health, but not as many know that tobacco waste is terrible for the environment. Cigarette butts, the most littered items in the world, and e-cigarette waste are not biodegradable and contaminate our waterways, soil, and wildlife with toxic chemicals and plastics. Worse, almost no tobacco waste can be recycled and disposing of it further harms the environment.

Every year, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered worldwide, 65 percent of them deliberately. According to the Public Health Law Center, that weighs 850,000 tons or about 30 times the weight of the Statue of Liberty. PHLC also reports that “in just western New York, approximately 1 billion cigarettes are smoked annually. In 2019, 339,716 cigarette butts, 44,822 cigar tips, and 1,868 other tobacco product waste items were collected from the Great Lakes Basin, including Lake Erie. Cigarette butts are among the most commonly found objects in sewer overflows that feed into the Hudson River.”