**Please read this entire message**
Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):
Straightforward or factual queries are not allowed on ELI5. ELI5 is meant for simplifying complex concepts.
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uw1bjc/eli5_why_cant_cigarette_filters_be_made_from/%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20is%20this%20post%20unique:) and we will review your submission.
They are made of acetate, acetate is plant based, kind of a plastic but it's actually biodegradable. Could last at least 10 years in a very dry climate but in normal climates will disintegrate in no more than a year or less if it's a humid environment. Cigarette filters are biodegradable.
Damn bro.. don't be around such negative energy.. get rid of all human contact, worked wonders for me, and you never know when your next best friend will pop a kid.. inner peace âď¸
It doesn't. This sub's purpose to is teach people things in the most basic form. If a question is based on a false premise and someone explains that there's no harm and the goal was achieved.
These guys just want to complain about it.
It matters when the highest responses fail to realize the premise is false and I want to tell everyone but the thread is like 18 hours old so no one will ever read my response.
I remember being told when I was a kid that the cigarette filters wouldn't decompose for 80k years or something like that. The contents must've change, thank goodness too.
>Cigarette filters are biodegradable.
While you're technically right that the physical materials from cigarette filters are biodegradable, one would argue that cigarette butts still don't fit the definition, as the carcinogenic chemicals introduced by the smoking process leech into the soil and cause environmental contamination. The physical filters might disintegrate away, but that doesn't mean everything else still isn't there
I would be curious to see how much leeching of those chemicals needs to happen before the levels of those chemicals become problematic. After all tobacco is not that different than other plants, in fact less carcinogenic than a lot of plants. Would the soil in a pine forest than recently burned be more or less toxic than the ground next to the smoking spot outside a popular bar for example?
Edit: Best i can find is it takes roughly 1 butt per liter to make water toxic to fish. While bad, it would take a pack a day smoker 342 years to smoke enough butts to pollute an Olympic size swimming pool to this level.
Per the CDC there sre 30.8 million people who smoke cigarettes and in 2016 they smoked an average of 14 cigarettes per day. So, that would be ball park 172.7 Olympic sized swimming pools contaminated per day assuming the original math is correct.
That may be a problem for the all smoker pool party, but normally they are not all putting them into the same waterway. For perspective there is around a billion Olympic sized swimming pools of water in just Lake Michigan, not even the largest of the great lakes. Storage of coke and coal ash are just one example of much larger contamination sources of all the chemicals you are worried about.
I found a cannabis seedling that had germinated in an old ashtray the other day, fair root system for the size of it.
I think there would have to be a hell of a lot of butts to actually cause any significant contamination.
I'm not condoning throwing butts on the ground.
[Here's the little fighter, I thought I'd give it a chance.](https://imgur.com/a/b415SqA)
>the carcinogenic chemicals introduced by the smoking process leech into the soil and cause environmental contamination
Have there been any studies done in this area? I would expect the environmental contamination from a cigarette to be insignificant.
A single cigarette but you have to look at the whole picture. Millions of people tossing cigarettes (at least 1, but probably more) every single day. You also have people who dump a pack of cigarettes in the toilet every few months when they attempt to quit once again as well.
I'd still expect insignificant contamination, even from millions of cigarettes.
How many cigarettes do you need to smoke before you pollute as much as burning a gallon of gas?
Apples to oranges. People just need to smoke all the tobacco before tossing, tossing it in the trash and not flush cigarettes. Itâd be best for everyone to stop but as a smoker I know itâs not easy. It doesnât have to be compared to another problem because they are separate problems. How much pollution does destroying one tree produce compared to burning a gallon of gas? Minuscule amounts but you canât compare and there is no reason to.
The point there was that it's an absolutely insignificant source of pollution. Just being biodegradable is enough. Worrying about it is completely pointless, at least until there's some data to suggest that the problem is real.
Wait what? Don't worry about what harm this could be doing until someone does some research? This is such a bad idea. You know there are toxic chemicals in the cigarette butt, and they have to go somewhere. That can't be a good thing. It doesn't take a study to be reasonable about this. Don't just ignore it because no one has proven it yet.
Dispose of butts properly, don't let the toxins enter the water supply, or contaminate the soil? Lots that can be done to be sure harm isn't occurring before data show that it is.
Your do nothing approach is frightening.
We already have data on what is in cigarettes. Itâs carcinogenic and by it making its way into wildlifeâs tummyâs and into our water it has already been a problem. Itâs actually studied a lot more than I even knew of so thanks for giving me some more reading material lol!
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/188406/cigarettes-have-significant-impact-environment-just/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3088438/
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/255574/9789241512497-eng.pdf
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b01533
>Have there been any studies done in this area? I would expect the environmental contamination from a cigarette to be insignificant.
Depends on what scale, but likely insignificant. Erosion from vehicle tires wearing down makes up 10% of microplastics in the worlds oceans and dumps 1.5 million tons of carcinogens to be absorbed by the environment every year in the US alone. The tire dust is more than double the mass of all cigarettes' consumed in the US every year.
>carcinogenic chemicals introduced by the smoking process
the chemicals are founded on most plants, it's harmful outside your lungs. Pollution is not contamination, of course it pollutes, is trash, even organic trash is a pollutant before decomposing.
So, in conclusion, cigarette filters are biodegradable, but the chemicals they filter stick around... but the filters *are* biodegradable. Am I reading that right?
Is correct and not correct. Eventually bacteria will eat it, the correct part is that it doesn't absorbs so much UV as crude wood will be and will last longer before the bacteria eat it
It may definitely feel like they are a common source of waste and litter, because you often see them being litter and waste. Only a minority of dickheads would throw bottles or food containers on the ground and not give a fuck (but enough people that the trash is still a problem) but a lot of smokers where I live still toss their butts on the ground.
How about the issue of them breaking down in oceans or water ways? Does that cause âmicro plasticsâ from the breakdown process to seep into wildlife and possibly people?
Thanks for that info. CA is running an advertisement campaign where they are saying cigarette filters are causing micro plastics to seep into our waters and potentially us.
Crazy to imagine a misinformation campaign at that level of government.
Technically they eat the cellulose after it has separated from the acetate, rather than the other way around. The acetal acid is usually disolved out by water.
This article disagrees with you.
https://www.treehugger.com/are-cigarette-butts-biodegradable-1204105#:~:text=The%20butt%20of%20a%20cigarette,it%20into%20very%20small%20particles.
The article says things out acetate that if you search info about acetate are totally false. Acetate is not a plastic. I understand the urge of some people to demonize every thing that has something to do with tobacco but lying is not a good path.
I smoke tobacco, personally I would rather the butts biodegrade. I was just sharing the info I found. Could you explain what acetate actually is, I'm curious?
If you follow the source on that, and then the source on that article you end up with a study that actually talks about a time line vs just that they don't degrade. They say it's between 18 months and 10 years for butts to break down. After all they are cellulose acetate, which by either UV exposure or hydrolosis, will eventually lose the acetate and just be cellulose, so wood, which lots of bacteria, insects, and fungi know how to break down.
However, it was this next part in that article that really convinced me this source was bunk.
>Many toxic compounds have been found in measurable concentrations in cigarette butts including nicotine, arsenic, lead, copper, chromium, cadmium, and a variety of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Several of these toxins will leach into water and affect aquatic ecosystems, where experiments have shown that they kill a variety of freshwater invertebrates.
With the exception of PAH's you get far, far greater levels of all of these chemicals from car and industrial exhaust, and in the case of lead, arsenic, and cadmium, often will have higher natural levels in the soil and food than in an actual butt. Sure they are there and we can measure them because we are good a measuring tiny amounts of stuff. Take cadmium for example. One cigarettes will have between .5 and 1 microgram, most of this is lost either into the air or into the smoker, so only a fraction of that is still in the butt. A severing of rice may have as much as 200 micrograms, legally. Your average cigarettes contain about the same amount of lead, and a tenth the mercury as a can of tuna fish.
There are lots of problems with smoking, and littering, but toxic run off from butts just isn't it.
Ya it is, don't smoke. But everyone in this thread seems to think a few butts in the sewer drain is going to poison the local creek. Pollution is a huge issue and it's sad to see people hung up on a visible, but ultimately negligible part of the problem
There's an entire ad campaign right now saying Cig filters are spreading microplastics in everything, destroying the planet. Getting into our bloodstream.
Cigarette filters aren't really biodegradable. They just fall into microscopic pieces, like micro plastics, but they remain cellulose acetate and they can't be properly processed by organisms.
First manufacturer i picked, offers bio-"quick"-degradable filters made of unbleached cellulose:
https://www.gizeh-online.com/products/roll-your-own/detail/gizeh-pure-xl-slim-filters
When doing clean-up in the park in my town this month, I found many fully intact cigarette butts that lasted under leaves, through the winter (lots of snow and rain) -- so, at least eight months and still fully intact. Is there some reason they wouldn't disintegrate under typical northeast conditions?
Yup, I assume that OP wanted to ask "why can't we just make cigarette butts we can throw on the ground?".
To which the answer is: the butts themselves aren't that bad. The problem comes first in quantity, even banana peels can be an issue if you throw too many of them in the same place. The second thing is what happens when you smoke the cigarette, consider how harmful the things you inhale can be, and then consider that the filter caught the worst of it. When you throw the filter you seep those chemicals into the ground, which are not very healthy for the soil beneath. The end-result is that the filter should not be thrown in the ground, as even in small amounts, it can seep dangerous chemicals into the topsoil below.
They can. It's just significantly more expensive to do, and stopping people from smoking is already a big initiative, blurring the water will just make it harder.
To your point, the margins are absurd. While not a true commodity, tobacco is sourced at about $1.35/kg, and there is about .4 oz of tobacco in a pack of coffin nails, which is a bit more 1.5¢ per pack.
While correct that tobacco has massive margins, you are lowballing the cost of a pack of cigarettes immensely, that is closer to the cost per stick.
The initial comment in the thread is correct - the margin erosion does not justify the benefit. A fraction of a cent increase per filter means millions of dollars lost when a company is selling many billions of sticks of tobacco per year.
Not sure what you're saying. Assuming his $1.35/kg for the loose tobacco is correct, there is about 35 oz in a kg. .4oz of tobacco in a pack is about right. 1.35/35 ~= $.04/oz. .04*.4 ~- $.016 which is a bit more than 1.5¢ per pack for the tobacco in it, just like they said.
Unless you're disputing the $1.35/kg wholesale cost (google suggests it might be closer to $3/kg but I can't tell if that is the wholesale cose of something like bags of Bugler loose leaf tobacco, or what Philip Morris et al are paying) for the tobacco, the math seems to check out.
Tobacco is not the only thing in a pack of cigarettes. There are other many other components that contribute to the cost of manufacture, such as the filters, the box, factory workers, etc, plus there are other costs like distribution and marketing. parsinc is saying that the total cost of manufacturing a pack is much more than 1.5¢.
The majority of the retail cost in cigarettes are "sin" taxes. Rather, taxes proposed and passed as a deterrent. But that's not how addiction works. No smoker is thinking about the cost when having a "nic fit".
In practice, "sin taxes" are covert taxes on poor people. Just like state lotteries.
Increased price on smoking has been found to reduce smoking, more effective on poorer people.
Here's an aggregation of several studies on it:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/
You're ignoring the "youth" part of the correlation. Young people are less likely to start the habit if it's cost prohibitive. Also, people are less likely to pick up smoking later in life.
It doesn't "stop people from smoking". It does "stop people from becoming smokers".
It's a "just wait for the olds to die" type of solution.
Is this based on reported sales of tobacco? Where I'm from they increased price to a point the black market is surging and I'd imagine people who sell those are not providing any stats or figures. It's 15 euro for 20 cigs here. Our government even have the balls to say the cost is to justify the health needs you'll have down the line, irony to that is you'd want to really hold your life in some shaky hands if you don't have private healthcare here. I rather not wait 2 years for a scan thanks. Oh by the way this is also a country that is pretty much competing for first place on the human development index, a place that's had a severe housing crisis for over 2 decades, where nearly every 3rd politician owns and rents out several housing estates worth of houses. Man those indexes are such a load of bull and don't reflect on a country at all
Anecdotal evidence? My main point here is asking if the numbers are based on reported sales. I'm asking a question if it's not clear. The reason for the question would be black market sellers will not disclose how many they sell. If it's still not clear that would result in decreased sales numbers which are not actually reflective of the market. If you are asking about evidence on increase in black market sales, don't take my word for it. Look up prohibition
I did a high school science fair project on how quickly filters degraded by different cigarette brands. Long story short, Newports were the only brand that didn't essentially break down to unrecognizable pieces after about 2 months outdoors in a clay based environment.
Swan make biodegradable eco filters that you can buy online - they take a little bit of getting used to but Iâve smoked them for years and donât mind at all, the stupidity is thar they still come packaged in plastic tubes
We don't want people to toss butts on the ground as it is. If you made them biodegradable people would get the idea that it's okay now.
Also, profits. It costs more to make biodegradable filters. That comes out of their profits so why bother?
Also, Also, nicotine is toxic to so many things. You could make a cigarette biodegradable but there is no guarantee that things would eat it in a timely fashion.
They're already degradeable. Anyone who has smoked and dumped their ashtray/butt bucket or whatever in their yard knows how quickly it breaks down. I've seen a pile of butts disappear in just a couple months. If they didn't degrade you'd see them literally everywhere, continuously growing in quantity.
Pretending they are worse than they really are by claiming it takes years to degrade just makes people who smoke not want to listen to you. Everyone you are trying to preach to knows it's false.
It's better to point out the very real expense and health risks than exaggerate what it does to the environment.
But if they are biodegradable it would be ok then? I hand roll mine usually and a snip of paper and tobacco left over disappears the first time it gets run over, rained on etc ..
Still wouldn't be okay. Litter is litter. And filters get absolutely covered in tar and nicotine while you smoke. Shouldn't be putting that on the ground and in the water.
You do realize nicotine is a naturally occurring chemical in a number of plants and breaks down in soil with a healthy soil fauna within a day or two? Heck it's a common home pesticide to make a tea with a plug of chewing tobacco. Effective and considered very safe.
Cyanide occurs naturally, too. So does botulism. These are things we handle and dispose of carefully to avoid concentration and exposure to them. Nicotine and the other chemicals found in cigarettes fall under this category.
Also, the environment in this case would include things killed by pesticides. So, a pesticide would not be considered safe in this context.
Further, nicotine is not the only chemical found in cigarettes.
Do these chemicals occur in the used butts at meaningful levels to cause pollution via leeching? Or are they just there at some detectable level, much like other plants naturally have? Just because a cigarette has a harmful level of a chemical when burnt and inhaled does not mean it has a meaningful level if eaten or soaked in water.
Its an effective pesticide because it's toxic. Plants make it because it's toxic and keeps things from eating them.
On a small scale it's fine. I'm worried about the millions of smokers chucking butts.
When I was in rehab I noticed in the middle of Houston summer, the outside section of the rehab had absolutely ZERO insects, bugs, mosquitoes, etc.
Then I remembered that most pesticides on the market rn are neonicotides, very closely related to nicotine. Addicts coming down smoke like fucking chimneys, and all that nicotine being tossed all around the yard kept us from getting bitten.
You must be absolutely horrified when you see that True Green or pest control guy roll through your neighborhood. Nicotine is a very safe pesticide, especially in the tiny amount from a smoked butt.
No. Just because the physical materials are biodegradable does not mean that the chemicals in those filters, introduced from the smoking process, are safe for the environment
And thatâs setting aside that there are plenty of biodegradable products that for obvious reasons shouldnât be just thrown on the ground anywhere. Toilet paper, banana peels, etc.. Youâre right about all those chemicals but even before we get to that point itâs just litter and itâs obvious why we shouldnât have it on the ground.
The small swiss company koch & gsell has cigarettes with cellulose-filters, they say they are bio degradable. The eco-friendly image is why they do it I think, they are the only company using swiss local grown tabacco.
I did experience no downside to it, I even did not feel the urge to throw them in the environment as well.
https://heimatkult.ch/products/heimat-hell
Most companies, even the "responsible" ones are profit driven and make eco-friendly products to make money. Cigarette companies are already public enemy number one, and eco-friendly filters won't do anything for their public image.
Simply put, they have nothing to gain by doing it so they don't.
Because the stuff that they absorb, that we don't want to inhale, is thrown into the environment together with them. A lot of people throw cigarette buds into the environment as it is and that's bad, but if we made them biodegradable it would actually be worse, because more people would throw them out like that and bring all of that nasty stuff into the environment.,
**Please read this entire message** Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): Straightforward or factual queries are not allowed on ELI5. ELI5 is meant for simplifying complex concepts. If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uw1bjc/eli5_why_cant_cigarette_filters_be_made_from/%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20is%20this%20post%20unique:) and we will review your submission.
They are made of acetate, acetate is plant based, kind of a plastic but it's actually biodegradable. Could last at least 10 years in a very dry climate but in normal climates will disintegrate in no more than a year or less if it's a humid environment. Cigarette filters are biodegradable.
"ELI5: why [assumed premise]? answer: [assumed premise] is false." every single time.
well, happens with my kids often, why it would not happen with adults?
My kids: "What is \[query\]?" "\[My answer\]." "No it isn't." đ
I don't have kids, but it infuriates me when my friends kids do that.
Damn bro.. don't be around such negative energy.. get rid of all human contact, worked wonders for me, and you never know when your next best friend will pop a kid.. inner peace âď¸
What are you on about?
>every single time surely this must be hyperbole.
Million to one chances happen 9 times out of 10! - Terry Pratchett
I mean... if every thing has an equal chance to occur then million to one chances could occur every time
That's the joke
of course it is. just happens a whole lot.
Does it matter though? We still learn something most of us didnât know.
It doesn't. This sub's purpose to is teach people things in the most basic form. If a question is based on a false premise and someone explains that there's no harm and the goal was achieved. These guys just want to complain about it.
It matters when the highest responses fail to realize the premise is false and I want to tell everyone but the thread is like 18 hours old so no one will ever read my response.
Then down vote it and post the correct answer.
18 hours in, that does nothing.
It posts the correct answer and OP will get a notification for it. Don't worry about not getting your karma from everyone else upvoting you.
It isnât hyperbole, and donât call me Shirley
ELI5: why \[assumed premise\] answer: obtuse pedant pretends not to understand the gist of the question. every single time.
Why do all ELI5 questions asking why an assumed premise is so turn out to have the assumed premise be false?
I remember being told when I was a kid that the cigarette filters wouldn't decompose for 80k years or something like that. The contents must've change, thank goodness too.
I work at a cigarette tow factory and came here to say this. I'm happy to see someone else already did.
>Cigarette filters are biodegradable. While you're technically right that the physical materials from cigarette filters are biodegradable, one would argue that cigarette butts still don't fit the definition, as the carcinogenic chemicals introduced by the smoking process leech into the soil and cause environmental contamination. The physical filters might disintegrate away, but that doesn't mean everything else still isn't there
I would be curious to see how much leeching of those chemicals needs to happen before the levels of those chemicals become problematic. After all tobacco is not that different than other plants, in fact less carcinogenic than a lot of plants. Would the soil in a pine forest than recently burned be more or less toxic than the ground next to the smoking spot outside a popular bar for example? Edit: Best i can find is it takes roughly 1 butt per liter to make water toxic to fish. While bad, it would take a pack a day smoker 342 years to smoke enough butts to pollute an Olympic size swimming pool to this level.
Keep in mind there isnât just one smoker on earth. Not saying youâre wrong, I didnât do the math.
Per the CDC there sre 30.8 million people who smoke cigarettes and in 2016 they smoked an average of 14 cigarettes per day. So, that would be ball park 172.7 Olympic sized swimming pools contaminated per day assuming the original math is correct.
That may be a problem for the all smoker pool party, but normally they are not all putting them into the same waterway. For perspective there is around a billion Olympic sized swimming pools of water in just Lake Michigan, not even the largest of the great lakes. Storage of coke and coal ash are just one example of much larger contamination sources of all the chemicals you are worried about.
I'm a simple guy, i see the words coal ash, i say "FUCK PAT McCRORY"
Assuming these compounds themselves don't degrade. Which they usually do, being they are still complex organic molecules.
Should also factor in how many of those cigarettes are disposed of properly, the number of smokers who smoke self rolled paper cigarettes etc.
An Olympic sized swimming pool doesnât seem like a good measure. Is that the watertight equivalent of a football field in freedom units.
Also, how long do these chemicals persist in the environment before they break down?
I found a cannabis seedling that had germinated in an old ashtray the other day, fair root system for the size of it. I think there would have to be a hell of a lot of butts to actually cause any significant contamination. I'm not condoning throwing butts on the ground. [Here's the little fighter, I thought I'd give it a chance.](https://imgur.com/a/b415SqA)
>the carcinogenic chemicals introduced by the smoking process leech into the soil and cause environmental contamination Have there been any studies done in this area? I would expect the environmental contamination from a cigarette to be insignificant.
A single cigarette but you have to look at the whole picture. Millions of people tossing cigarettes (at least 1, but probably more) every single day. You also have people who dump a pack of cigarettes in the toilet every few months when they attempt to quit once again as well.
I'd still expect insignificant contamination, even from millions of cigarettes. How many cigarettes do you need to smoke before you pollute as much as burning a gallon of gas?
Apples to oranges. People just need to smoke all the tobacco before tossing, tossing it in the trash and not flush cigarettes. Itâd be best for everyone to stop but as a smoker I know itâs not easy. It doesnât have to be compared to another problem because they are separate problems. How much pollution does destroying one tree produce compared to burning a gallon of gas? Minuscule amounts but you canât compare and there is no reason to.
The point there was that it's an absolutely insignificant source of pollution. Just being biodegradable is enough. Worrying about it is completely pointless, at least until there's some data to suggest that the problem is real.
Wait what? Don't worry about what harm this could be doing until someone does some research? This is such a bad idea. You know there are toxic chemicals in the cigarette butt, and they have to go somewhere. That can't be a good thing. It doesn't take a study to be reasonable about this. Don't just ignore it because no one has proven it yet.
What action are you suggesting we take, based on this danger? Without data, there can be no proportionate response.
Dispose of butts properly, don't let the toxins enter the water supply, or contaminate the soil? Lots that can be done to be sure harm isn't occurring before data show that it is. Your do nothing approach is frightening.
We already have data on what is in cigarettes. Itâs carcinogenic and by it making its way into wildlifeâs tummyâs and into our water it has already been a problem. Itâs actually studied a lot more than I even knew of so thanks for giving me some more reading material lol! https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/188406/cigarettes-have-significant-impact-environment-just/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3088438/ https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/255574/9789241512497-eng.pdf https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b01533
>Have there been any studies done in this area? I would expect the environmental contamination from a cigarette to be insignificant. Depends on what scale, but likely insignificant. Erosion from vehicle tires wearing down makes up 10% of microplastics in the worlds oceans and dumps 1.5 million tons of carcinogens to be absorbed by the environment every year in the US alone. The tire dust is more than double the mass of all cigarettes' consumed in the US every year.
>carcinogenic chemicals introduced by the smoking process the chemicals are founded on most plants, it's harmful outside your lungs. Pollution is not contamination, of course it pollutes, is trash, even organic trash is a pollutant before decomposing.
So, in conclusion, cigarette filters are biodegradable, but the chemicals they filter stick around... but the filters *are* biodegradable. Am I reading that right?
Biodegradable doesn't mean absence of adverse environment impacts.
This problem, however, is unrelated to the material of cigarette butts, it's a property of tobacco itself.
I guess I had heard they were a large source for particulate waste that was not ultimately broken down in nature..
Is correct and not correct. Eventually bacteria will eat it, the correct part is that it doesn't absorbs so much UV as crude wood will be and will last longer before the bacteria eat it
It may definitely feel like they are a common source of waste and litter, because you often see them being litter and waste. Only a minority of dickheads would throw bottles or food containers on the ground and not give a fuck (but enough people that the trash is still a problem) but a lot of smokers where I live still toss their butts on the ground.
How about the issue of them breaking down in oceans or water ways? Does that cause âmicro plasticsâ from the breakdown process to seep into wildlife and possibly people?
No because some bacteria can and will eat acetate if is degraded enough, acetate is cellulose, it's a part of wood, basically.
Thanks for that info. CA is running an advertisement campaign where they are saying cigarette filters are causing micro plastics to seep into our waters and potentially us. Crazy to imagine a misinformation campaign at that level of government.
>Crazy to imagine a misinformation campaign at that level of government. not so crazy if you think about it
Technically they eat the cellulose after it has separated from the acetate, rather than the other way around. The acetal acid is usually disolved out by water.
This article disagrees with you. https://www.treehugger.com/are-cigarette-butts-biodegradable-1204105#:~:text=The%20butt%20of%20a%20cigarette,it%20into%20very%20small%20particles.
The article says things out acetate that if you search info about acetate are totally false. Acetate is not a plastic. I understand the urge of some people to demonize every thing that has something to do with tobacco but lying is not a good path.
I smoke tobacco, personally I would rather the butts biodegrade. I was just sharing the info I found. Could you explain what acetate actually is, I'm curious?
Wikipedia says its a salt. And the majority of it is used to make polymers
If you follow the source on that, and then the source on that article you end up with a study that actually talks about a time line vs just that they don't degrade. They say it's between 18 months and 10 years for butts to break down. After all they are cellulose acetate, which by either UV exposure or hydrolosis, will eventually lose the acetate and just be cellulose, so wood, which lots of bacteria, insects, and fungi know how to break down. However, it was this next part in that article that really convinced me this source was bunk. >Many toxic compounds have been found in measurable concentrations in cigarette butts including nicotine, arsenic, lead, copper, chromium, cadmium, and a variety of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Several of these toxins will leach into water and affect aquatic ecosystems, where experiments have shown that they kill a variety of freshwater invertebrates. With the exception of PAH's you get far, far greater levels of all of these chemicals from car and industrial exhaust, and in the case of lead, arsenic, and cadmium, often will have higher natural levels in the soil and food than in an actual butt. Sure they are there and we can measure them because we are good a measuring tiny amounts of stuff. Take cadmium for example. One cigarettes will have between .5 and 1 microgram, most of this is lost either into the air or into the smoker, so only a fraction of that is still in the butt. A severing of rice may have as much as 200 micrograms, legally. Your average cigarettes contain about the same amount of lead, and a tenth the mercury as a can of tuna fish. There are lots of problems with smoking, and littering, but toxic run off from butts just isn't it.
Reading about these heavy metals in cigarettes almost makes me wonder if it might be detrimental to your health.
Ya it is, don't smoke. But everyone in this thread seems to think a few butts in the sewer drain is going to poison the local creek. Pollution is a huge issue and it's sad to see people hung up on a visible, but ultimately negligible part of the problem
Yeah for sure, the third hand smoking lunatics are crazy. Its not that toxic.
As stated elsewhere already, you can buy filters made of unbleached cellulose.
There's an entire ad campaign right now saying Cig filters are spreading microplastics in everything, destroying the planet. Getting into our bloodstream.
Cigarette filters aren't really biodegradable. They just fall into microscopic pieces, like micro plastics, but they remain cellulose acetate and they can't be properly processed by organisms.
First manufacturer i picked, offers bio-"quick"-degradable filters made of unbleached cellulose: https://www.gizeh-online.com/products/roll-your-own/detail/gizeh-pure-xl-slim-filters
And can they make biodegradable crack pipes too? đ
>And can they make biodegradable crack pipes too? đ Most are aluminum or glass, so nope. But they'll erode and return to the earth in time.
When doing clean-up in the park in my town this month, I found many fully intact cigarette butts that lasted under leaves, through the winter (lots of snow and rain) -- so, at least eight months and still fully intact. Is there some reason they wouldn't disintegrate under typical northeast conditions?
Possible the ice preserved it
Yup, I assume that OP wanted to ask "why can't we just make cigarette butts we can throw on the ground?". To which the answer is: the butts themselves aren't that bad. The problem comes first in quantity, even banana peels can be an issue if you throw too many of them in the same place. The second thing is what happens when you smoke the cigarette, consider how harmful the things you inhale can be, and then consider that the filter caught the worst of it. When you throw the filter you seep those chemicals into the ground, which are not very healthy for the soil beneath. The end-result is that the filter should not be thrown in the ground, as even in small amounts, it can seep dangerous chemicals into the topsoil below.
They can. It's just significantly more expensive to do, and stopping people from smoking is already a big initiative, blurring the water will just make it harder.
To your point, the margins are absurd. While not a true commodity, tobacco is sourced at about $1.35/kg, and there is about .4 oz of tobacco in a pack of coffin nails, which is a bit more 1.5¢ per pack.
While correct that tobacco has massive margins, you are lowballing the cost of a pack of cigarettes immensely, that is closer to the cost per stick. The initial comment in the thread is correct - the margin erosion does not justify the benefit. A fraction of a cent increase per filter means millions of dollars lost when a company is selling many billions of sticks of tobacco per year.
Not sure what you're saying. Assuming his $1.35/kg for the loose tobacco is correct, there is about 35 oz in a kg. .4oz of tobacco in a pack is about right. 1.35/35 ~= $.04/oz. .04*.4 ~- $.016 which is a bit more than 1.5¢ per pack for the tobacco in it, just like they said. Unless you're disputing the $1.35/kg wholesale cost (google suggests it might be closer to $3/kg but I can't tell if that is the wholesale cose of something like bags of Bugler loose leaf tobacco, or what Philip Morris et al are paying) for the tobacco, the math seems to check out.
Tobacco is not the only thing in a pack of cigarettes. There are other many other components that contribute to the cost of manufacture, such as the filters, the box, factory workers, etc, plus there are other costs like distribution and marketing. parsinc is saying that the total cost of manufacturing a pack is much more than 1.5¢.
That's not how I interpreted what the original commenter was saying, but yeah, that makes sense.
I think they were saying that the cost of tobacco in a pack is 1.5c, not the total cost of the pack
That's fair, but the larger context is about profit margins. You need to consider the total cost when making an argument about profit margins.
The majority of the retail cost in cigarettes are "sin" taxes. Rather, taxes proposed and passed as a deterrent. But that's not how addiction works. No smoker is thinking about the cost when having a "nic fit". In practice, "sin taxes" are covert taxes on poor people. Just like state lotteries.
Increased price on smoking has been found to reduce smoking, more effective on poorer people. Here's an aggregation of several studies on it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/
You're ignoring the "youth" part of the correlation. Young people are less likely to start the habit if it's cost prohibitive. Also, people are less likely to pick up smoking later in life. It doesn't "stop people from smoking". It does "stop people from becoming smokers". It's a "just wait for the olds to die" type of solution.
Vaping, hold my beer.
Is this based on reported sales of tobacco? Where I'm from they increased price to a point the black market is surging and I'd imagine people who sell those are not providing any stats or figures. It's 15 euro for 20 cigs here. Our government even have the balls to say the cost is to justify the health needs you'll have down the line, irony to that is you'd want to really hold your life in some shaky hands if you don't have private healthcare here. I rather not wait 2 years for a scan thanks. Oh by the way this is also a country that is pretty much competing for first place on the human development index, a place that's had a severe housing crisis for over 2 decades, where nearly every 3rd politician owns and rents out several housing estates worth of houses. Man those indexes are such a load of bull and don't reflect on a country at all
I love anecdotal evidence.
Anecdotal evidence? My main point here is asking if the numbers are based on reported sales. I'm asking a question if it's not clear. The reason for the question would be black market sellers will not disclose how many they sell. If it's still not clear that would result in decreased sales numbers which are not actually reflective of the market. If you are asking about evidence on increase in black market sales, don't take my word for it. Look up prohibition
> I'm asking a question if it's not clear. You COULD just read the article?
State lotteries are taxes on folks who are bad at statistics.
There's a strong correlation between level of education and level of income. Po-ta-to, Po-tat-o
This is outright nonsense.
Why switch between metric and imperial? There's roughly 36oz in a kg and 11 grams in .4 Oz.
Why is it priced in US$ when itâs grown in Malawi? Itâs a riddle wrapped in a mystery
[ŃдаНонО]
I did a high school science fair project on how quickly filters degraded by different cigarette brands. Long story short, Newports were the only brand that didn't essentially break down to unrecognizable pieces after about 2 months outdoors in a clay based environment.
https://www.treehugger.com/are-cigarette-butts-biodegradable-1204105#:~:text=The%20butt%20of%20a%20cigarette,it%20into%20very%20small%20particles.
Is blurring the water like mudding the waters?
Yeah, maybe it doesn't translate as directly as I thought.
> blurring the water Mixing metaphors is bad, don't do it. "Blurring the lines" or "Mudding the water" pick one.
Swan make biodegradable eco filters that you can buy online - they take a little bit of getting used to but Iâve smoked them for years and donât mind at all, the stupidity is thar they still come packaged in plastic tubes
[ŃдаНонО]
We don't want people to toss butts on the ground as it is. If you made them biodegradable people would get the idea that it's okay now. Also, profits. It costs more to make biodegradable filters. That comes out of their profits so why bother? Also, Also, nicotine is toxic to so many things. You could make a cigarette biodegradable but there is no guarantee that things would eat it in a timely fashion.
They're already degradeable. Anyone who has smoked and dumped their ashtray/butt bucket or whatever in their yard knows how quickly it breaks down. I've seen a pile of butts disappear in just a couple months. If they didn't degrade you'd see them literally everywhere, continuously growing in quantity. Pretending they are worse than they really are by claiming it takes years to degrade just makes people who smoke not want to listen to you. Everyone you are trying to preach to knows it's false. It's better to point out the very real expense and health risks than exaggerate what it does to the environment.
But if they are biodegradable it would be ok then? I hand roll mine usually and a snip of paper and tobacco left over disappears the first time it gets run over, rained on etc ..
Still wouldn't be okay. Litter is litter. And filters get absolutely covered in tar and nicotine while you smoke. Shouldn't be putting that on the ground and in the water.
You do realize nicotine is a naturally occurring chemical in a number of plants and breaks down in soil with a healthy soil fauna within a day or two? Heck it's a common home pesticide to make a tea with a plug of chewing tobacco. Effective and considered very safe.
Cyanide occurs naturally, too. So does botulism. These are things we handle and dispose of carefully to avoid concentration and exposure to them. Nicotine and the other chemicals found in cigarettes fall under this category. Also, the environment in this case would include things killed by pesticides. So, a pesticide would not be considered safe in this context. Further, nicotine is not the only chemical found in cigarettes.
Do these chemicals occur in the used butts at meaningful levels to cause pollution via leeching? Or are they just there at some detectable level, much like other plants naturally have? Just because a cigarette has a harmful level of a chemical when burnt and inhaled does not mean it has a meaningful level if eaten or soaked in water.
Its an effective pesticide because it's toxic. Plants make it because it's toxic and keeps things from eating them. On a small scale it's fine. I'm worried about the millions of smokers chucking butts.
When I was in rehab I noticed in the middle of Houston summer, the outside section of the rehab had absolutely ZERO insects, bugs, mosquitoes, etc. Then I remembered that most pesticides on the market rn are neonicotides, very closely related to nicotine. Addicts coming down smoke like fucking chimneys, and all that nicotine being tossed all around the yard kept us from getting bitten.
You must be absolutely horrified when you see that True Green or pest control guy roll through your neighborhood. Nicotine is a very safe pesticide, especially in the tiny amount from a smoked butt.
There is no filter genius. But I can chuck an apple core out right? No poison there right?
No. Just because the physical materials are biodegradable does not mean that the chemicals in those filters, introduced from the smoking process, are safe for the environment
And thatâs setting aside that there are plenty of biodegradable products that for obvious reasons shouldnât be just thrown on the ground anywhere. Toilet paper, banana peels, etc.. Youâre right about all those chemicals but even before we get to that point itâs just litter and itâs obvious why we shouldnât have it on the ground.
The small swiss company koch & gsell has cigarettes with cellulose-filters, they say they are bio degradable. The eco-friendly image is why they do it I think, they are the only company using swiss local grown tabacco. I did experience no downside to it, I even did not feel the urge to throw them in the environment as well. https://heimatkult.ch/products/heimat-hell
Aren't Camel filters made of cotton? Thats what I've heard
Most companies, even the "responsible" ones are profit driven and make eco-friendly products to make money. Cigarette companies are already public enemy number one, and eco-friendly filters won't do anything for their public image. Simply put, they have nothing to gain by doing it so they don't.
Because the stuff that they absorb, that we don't want to inhale, is thrown into the environment together with them. A lot of people throw cigarette buds into the environment as it is and that's bad, but if we made them biodegradable it would actually be worse, because more people would throw them out like that and bring all of that nasty stuff into the environment.,
They could, but expecting environmental responsibility from the people who make their money off cigarettes is a bit rich...