Study says cigarette butts are the No. 1 source of litter

Larry Bunt pointed to location after location while standing in front of a downtown Florence restaurant."Look at them," the Florence resident said. "You see them everywhere."

Bunt, a smoker, was talking about the cigarette butts scattered in the parking lot.

He said cigarette-butt litter is a personal peeve.

"I put mine in an ashtray and throw them in the garbage," he said. "Most people don't, though."

A study from the Keep America Beautiful campaign backs up his statement, stating cigarette butts are the No. 1 source of litter. The study reveals 10 percent of cigarette butts are deposited properly.

A study from the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy revealed cigarette butts are the most common shoreline trash.

"They should deposit cigarette butts correctly," said Florence resident Sherry Bonds, who smokes. "I don't like them in my yard, either."

Judy Keenum, coordinator of the Shoals Chamber of Commerce's Keep the Shoals Beautiful campaign, said typical smokers are like other residents: They don't intend to litter.

The problem is many don't realize they are littering when they flick a cigarette butt out a vehicle window or toss one on the ground.

"Maybe the same person wouldn't throw out a candy wrapper, because they would never litter, but a cigarette butt isn't considered litter to them," Keenum said. "They don't put it in the same category."

She believes educating smokers about the matter would help, because most people want to do the right thing, she said. In addition, providing receptacles makes it convenient to deposit filters.

As part of a 2009 campaign by Keep the Shoals Beautiful, cigarette receptacles were placed at several locations throughout the area.

That included one outside the Lauderdale County Courthouse and another outside the Florence Municipal Building.

Before doing that, however, volunteers counted cigarette butts at the locations. A total of 2,840 were found outside the courthouse and municipal building, Keenum said.

"People don't think about how it adds up," Keenum said.

Six weeks after placing receptacles there, another count was done. The number outside the courthouse and municipal building decreased to 1,626, she said.

Similar results were found in the other locations. "In every case, there were fewer cigarettes," Keenum said. "So in every case, it was effective."

She said cigarette butts are not biodegradable. "Eventually they end up in the Tennessee River, and still have the nicotine, poisons and toxins in them."

The 2006 Ocean Conservancy project collected litter from 34,000 miles of shoreline in 68 countries, according to a report in the Tampa Tribune.

Some 1.9 million cigarette filters were among them, the report states. That was the most common type of litter discovered.

Keep the Shoals Beautiful workers say if all smokers in the Shoals smoked a pack a day, about 115 million cigarette butts would be generated in a year.

Bunt used to live in Pompano Beach, Fla., where the police force had workers whose sole duty was to monitor cigarette-filter litter.

"They charged people," he said. "They acted like meter maids. You'd look out at a street and it would just be clear of cigarette butts. It works."