More than half a million cigarette butts picked up in two weeks
No butts: Most people are not aware that cigarette butts are made of plastic and are toxic, said NGO stop2drop
Keystone / Leandre Duggan
Around 540,000 cigarette butts have been collected in Switzerland over the past fortnight by volunteers. Almost 2,900 children and adults from 21 cantons took part in the campaign organised by NGO stop2drop.
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Más de medio millón de colillas recogidas en dos semanas
With the national cigarette butt collection campaign stop2dropExternal link is trying to change people’s attitudes, it said in a statement on Tuesday. Most people are not aware that cigarette butts are made of plastic and are toxic. Their removal from the environment is extremely costly and energy-intensive, it said.
Stop2drop is demanding that the tobacco industry pay for the environmental damage and that politicians do something about the “mountain of toxic waste”.
Today, 75% of all cigarette butts end up in nature – some 4.5 trillion cigarette filters a year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). They are among the ten most common plastics in the world’s oceans.
Rain and snow dissolve the toxic substances from the filters, which then pollute water sources, stop2drop said. It added that carelessly discarded cigarette butts continue to pollute nature as harmful microplastics for hundreds of years. The roughly 7,000 chemicals contained in a single stub endanger plants, humans and animals, it said.
According to stop2drop, municipalities in Switzerland spend CHF52 million ($57 million) a year on the removal of cigarette litter alone.
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