Switzerland: awareness raising around a cigarette butt collection operation

35,000 young people took part in the 21st edition of the^th edition of the Non-Smoking Experience project.

Every year, the Non-Smoking Experience competition, organized by the Swiss Association for the Prevention of Smoking (AT), rewards its winners and seeks to convince young people never to start smoking. This year, it raised awareness of the theme of littering, this practice which consists of throwing one's rubbish on the ground.

35,000 young people from 1,880 schools throughout Switzerland, including Liechtenstein, took part in a giant cigarette butt collection operation called stop2drop[1] in March. To take part in the competition, students also had to commit to not consuming any tobacco products for the next six months, which 78% of them achieved. Other people, young people not in school or citizens, were also invited to join the project.

Cigarette butts, a permanent pollution

The goal of collecting one million cigarette butts in two weeks has almost been reached (958,181 cigarette butts counted, precisely). A drop in the ocean of pollution generated by the billions of cigarette butts thrown into nature every day, but which has the merit of drawing attention to this daily calamity. Beyond students, their parents and the entire population, this alert operation also aims to raise awareness among smokers: "More than half of cigarette butts are thrown on the ground instead of being put in the trash" regrets Markus Dick, head of the "Non-smoking experience" project. The highly publicized operation also aimed to encourage political decision-makers and the tobacco industry to react and provide concrete solutions [2].

It is estimated that a single cigarette butt thrown into nature pollutes up to 500 litres of water and takes around 11 years to degrade [3]. The thousands of chemical components from cigarette butts are then spread by rain and snow. The infiltration of microparticles into groundwater has an impact on soil quality, plant nutrition and the health of animals – and of course, humans. Most of the 6,000 billion cigarettes put into circulation each year in the world have a filter, and half of their butts are thus dispersed in nature.

A very polluting industry

Although it is now trying to restore its image by funding a few facade ecological programs, the tobacco industry is fundamentally polluting: from tobacco plantations copiously sprayed with pesticides to the lungs of smokers and the atmosphere in homes, through uncontrolled factories (free zones) and hundreds of thousands of trucks for transport, the tobacco industry is polluting at each of its stages. The waste generated, for its part, is not only composed of cigarette butts, but also cigarette packaging (paper, plastic). Added to this is all the waste linked to the industry's new products: electronic devices for electronic cigarettes, sometimes disposable, and heated tobacco, the plastics and batteries of which are even more polluting than cigarettes [4].

Cigarette filters and butts alone are among the planet's main sources of waste: they represent 40% of the waste in the Mediterranean Sea. Made of a plastic material called cellulose acetate, "filters" in reality have no effect on reducing health risks. They do not prevent any of the toxic particles in tobacco from reaching smokers' lungs. The presence of a filter, however, is less irritating to the throat, which allowed the tobacco industry to claim that these cigarettes were milder and to target women and children as early as the 1950s. The presence of these filters is now being debated, with many calling for them to be removed for environmental reasons and so that smokers stop believing that they protect them. In the meantime, a European directive adopted in December and applicable from 3 July 2018 requires cigarette manufacturers to indicate on packets that cigarette filters contain plastic [5].

Keywords: cigarette butts – young people – pollution – plastic – Switzerland

Photo credit : ©Stop2Drop

©Tobacco Free Generation

---

[1] Stop2drop, The results of stop2drop. Accessed May 12, 2021. [2] Dick M, Non-smoking experience: 35,000 young people tackled the problem of cigarettes thrown into nature. Published on May 11, 2021, consulted on May 12, 2021. [3] Génération Sans Tabac, Butts, a big polluter of the seas and oceans. Published January 17, 2020, accessed May 12, 2021. [4] Truth Initiative, A toxic, plastic problem: E-cigarette waste and the environment, Published on March 8, 2021, consulted on May 12, 2021. [5] Génération Sans Tabac, Plastic in filters: the new European regulation. Published January 20, 2021, accessed May 12, 2021.National Committee Against Smoking |