The Olchinger Grünen have collected butts in the city – and the transparent collection box reveals an innumerable quantity of them. The aim of this campaign is to raise awareness of the issue and to encourage people not to carelessly dispose of butts on the ground outdoors, according to the press release. The solution: “Pocket ashtrays fit in every (trouser) pocket and can be emptied with the residual waste at home.” Carelessly discarded butts are not just an aesthetic problem, but a massive environmental problem.
7000 pollutants
The facts speak for themselves: Cigarettes contain more than 7000 harmful substances, 50 of which have been proven to be carcinogenic. Cigarette butts contain toxic substances such as arsenic, lead, chromium, copper, cadmium, formaldehyde, benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Two to six milligrams of toxic nicotine end up in the environment for each cigarette butt. Washed out of the butts, these toxins find their way into rivers, lakes and seas. A single cigarette butt can poison up to 40 liters of groundwater. Around 106 billion cigarettes are smoked in Germany every year; two-thirds of this ends up in the environment, equivalent to more than 70 billion cigarette butts.