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.

The PHLC also reports that other tobacco waste has “proliferated and spread” over the past decades, including plastic packaging and parts for all types of tobacco products, such as “plastic tips for cigarillos and the mixed plastic, metal, and chemical waste from discarded cartridges and disposable e-cigarettes.” E-cigarette waste has become especially hard to control. In addition to non-biodegradable plastics, e-cigarette waste includes lithium batteries, which can explode and start fires, and concentrated liquid nicotine, which the Environmental Protection Agency has categorized as a hazardous waste. The EPA’s hazardous waste categorization means liquid nicotine is harmful and even fatal if ingested, especially by babies and small children. It is often fatal to wildlife when ingested.

As hazardous waste, liquid nicotine cannot be safely or legally thrown in the trash, nor can lithium batteries. They require specific processes for disposal, according to a range of federal laws and multiple agencies, including the EPA. However, few e-cigarette users are aware of the dangers and federal requirements for e-cigarette disposal, and worse, they don’t have any safe, legal way to dispose of them. There are very few e-cigarette disposal systems that allow for safe disposal, according to federal regulations in New York State. Often, vapes are tossed into a trash can or on the ground.

For many schools, vape disposal has become a costly, difficult problem because students will throw their vapes into school trash cans, in plumbing, and on school grounds to avoid getting caught and punished for having and using them. Schools are then stuck with large amounts of e-cigarette waste that require numerous, costly procedures to dispose of legally and safely.

The small lithium batteries in disposable vapes cause additional harm to the environment because they cannot be recycled. Batteries for non-disposable vapes are separate parts and can be recycled, but batteries in disposable vapes are part of the whole device and cannot be easily extracted. Instead, the PHLC says that waste management facilities often shred or puncture the disposable vapes and then incinerate them. That releases tons of carbon into the air and causes fires.

The tobacco industry, which markets disposable vapes as if they are disposable—and knows they are not—offers no assistance, guidance or funds for establishing safe disposal of e-cigarettes, according to the federal regulations. It is left to the rest of us, schools, local and state governments, and taxpayers, to develop disposal methods and pay for them.

Now that we have explained the terrible, no-good impact of tobacco waste on the environment, what can we do about it? A first step is raising public awareness about the problem and dispelling myths and outright lies about tobacco waste, such as cigarette butts being biodegradable or recyclable, or that disposable vapes are fine to throw in the trash or on the ground. Some actionable items include: gathering data on tobacco waste in our tri-county area to inform evidence-based solutions; working with schools to develop a safe, legal system to dispose of vapes; and working with local governments and employers to develop policies around managing tobacco waste.

TFC-DOS will have a table at the Otsego County Conservation Association’s Earth Festival on April 26 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Milford Central School, sharing more information about tobacco waste and the environment. Come by to say hello and share your ideas—we would love to hear them!

Jennifer Hill, community engagement coordinator, Nicole Schuck, youth engagement coordinator, and Kristen Richardson, director, Tobacco Free Communities: Delaware, Otsego and Schoharie.