Cigarette butts, a major polluter of the seas and oceans

According to the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project, most 6,000 billion cigarettes put into circulation every year are equipped with filters, and half of these end up in nature, due to a lack of effective legislation where it exists and a lack of global awareness on this subject.

Now, we know that the degradation process of a cigarette filter can take a very long time - between one and two years - and that one of its plastic components, cellulose acetate, takes between ten and eleven years.^[1].

Due to their composition, cigarettes represent a major environmental hazard. Directly immersed in the sea, a cigarette butt, containing more than 7,000 chemical elements, including heavy metals (cadmium, lead, chromium, mercury), or tar, can pollute up to 500 liters of water

This toxicity in the marine environment has direct effects: in less than four days, a single cigarette butt can destroy up to half of the fauna present in a liter of water. The micro-aquatic environment is not the only one affected, since different fish, particularly starved by overfishing, can ingest cigarette butts, possibly leading to their death, poisoning, or a false impression of satiety.^[2]. Non-smoking humans are not spared from the harmful effects of this pollution linked to the chemicals contained in cigarettes. Indeed, this study revealed that we find these cigarette butts in the stomachs of fish and ultimately on our plates.

In fact, because they are thrown into the gutters, A large part of cigarette butts end up in the sea and oceans. Compared to the huge number of cigarette butts in nature: more than 136,000 thrown away every second worldwide, this is one of the main factors in the pollution of marine environments. To give just one example, cigarette butts and filters represent 40% of waste in the Mediterranean Sea.

Pollution of the sea and oceans by cigarette butts would thus dangerously compromise the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12. and in particular Target 12.4 which states that "By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with internationally agreed guidelines, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil, in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment"[3].

In France, it is estimated that a thousand cigarette butts are thrown into the environment every second. In Paris alone, two billion cigarette butts are picked up every year, or 350^[4] tonnes. In its Article 18, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control emphasizes the need to take into account environmental imperatives.