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

New Initiative Aims To Reduce Tobacco Waste

In honor of Earth Day, Tobacco Free Communities: Delaware, Otsego and Schoharie is excited to announce our new statewide initiative: raising awareness of tobacco waste’s harmful impact on the environment and finding ways to reduce it. Through this new initiative, we can make our tri-county area even more beautiful and healthy than it already is. Finding and implementing solutions to preventing and reducing tobacco waste will be difficult and take time. We will need everyone’s help.

The first thing to know is that cigarette butts are the most littered item in the world, with more than 4.5 trillion discarded annually across the globe. The second thing to know is that cigarette butts do not biodegrade and they are not recyclable. They are made of cellulose acetate, a kind of plastic. Instead of biodegrading, they physically “break apart into toxic-laden microplastics that find their way into the water that we drink and the food that we eat,” according to the Public Health Law Center, which provides research and policy analysis to the New York State Department of Health on the commercial tobacco epidemic. Toxic chemicals in cigarette butts include nicotine, pesticides, arsenic and heavy metals.