One Maine Group is Asking for Cigarette Butts to be Made Biodegradable

Where do you toss your butts?

I'm not a smoker. Never have been. Sometimes I almost chuckle at the thought, because I admit to having a potentially addictive personality. Not to mention a flair for doing things that are absolutely terrible for me. But somehow over my lifetime, it's a habit I never picked up. Thankfully...

Nothing against smokers... Some of my best friends are smokers. But I think I can honestly say without batting an eyelash, almost all of my friends are wildly responsible about disposing of their butts. They either strip them and chuck them in the trash, or put them in a proper receptacle. But let's be real, a lot of people don't.

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Butts are biiig time litter, worldwide.

Butts are the most littered item on the face of the planet. You hear about plastics and chemicals and such, but no one talks nearly enough about cigarettes as litter. In the U.S., over 250 billion (with a B) cigarettes annually. 80% of those are not disposed of in a proper manner. That translates to 77 million pounds of butts are littered every year.

Let that number sink in. 77 million pounds of butts, coming from a group that only makes up just over 10% of the population. Yikes! Worldwide, the numbers are even crazier. To me it's not about telling people they can't smoke, just that they should take care of their trash.

There's a petition in Maine to try and curb the issue here.

I saw this petition on Reddit, and the idea is that cigarette manufacturers should explore making the filters out of a biodegradable material. What that would be, I don't know. But it's an idea gaining traction around the globe. Europe is considering a law like this, France has already enacted it, and California is also introducing legislation for a similar law.

Will it get anywhere? That remains to be seen. It'll be tough to convince companies to make different filters for different states, but it's worth a try. Butts will break down eventually, but they do leach nasty chemicals and things like that. It'd be worth it to do whatever we can to keep the great outdoors clean.

Speaking of the great outdoors, check this place out...