Video from group n° 054

Welcome to the webpage of group 054

The topic we have decided to explore is the following :
The pollution of cigarette butts

Our paper

Tired of seeing cigarette butts everywhere in the street?

Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see the ground strewn with cigarette butts. Indeed, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are thrown on the floor every year all around the world. Actually, smokers are not conscious enough of the harm. Most of the time, even if there are ashtrays around them, they throw their butts on the floor though.

Thus, cigarette filters are the source of a huge problem regarding environment conservation, in a world that has to fight pollution.

Cigarette filters are not biodegradable and they are made of toxic and harmful products to the environment such as cellulose acetate. Material that leaches out of these filters is toxic to aquatic life. Cigarette litter does not cause immediate obvious social or environmental damage but it will have a long-term effect on the social and environmental background: 40% of the waste in the Mediterranean Sea is due to cigarette filters and only one butt pollutes 500 liters of clean water.

Cigarette littering has such a scope on the environment because smokers represent a significant part of the world population. There are approximately 1 billion smokers in the world and for most of them, littering their cigarette butts once they have finished smoking is normal, and they don’t realize it is a really noxious habit.

In addition, cigarette butts thrown but not well extinguished could cause fires and hence a considerable and deadly damage. According to data from the United States Fire Administration, cigarette smoking is the first or second-leading cause of fire-related deaths every year in the USA.

In order to well find out this problem, we interviewed two experts of Tobacco filed, Thomas E. Novotny from USA and Emmanuelle Béguinot from CNCT (Centre National Contre le Tabagisme) in France. They shared their knowledge and point of view on this issue.

This problem concerns not only the smokers but also all the non-smokers, in other words, EVERYONE, because we all live in this planet suffering cigarette butts’ pollution. It deals also with governments and tobacco companies. Even if both sides have been working hard on this headache problem, solution was not found yet.

Thanks to internet and other means of communication, we hereby make this video to connect with you, with everybody, in order to let the world pay close attention to the urgency and importance of stopping the cigarette butts’ pollution.