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Eight years ago, in the town of Van Buren, Missouri, newly retired resident John Pope walked six blocks and picked up 1,085 cigarette butts.
The unsightly, unpleasant litter problem — as we’re all acutely aware — isn’t confined to Pope’s quiet community in southern Missouri.
Cigarette butts have the proud distinction of being the most common form of litter on America’s beaches. Some 6 trillion cigarettes are manufactured on Earth each year, and between 750 million to 1,500 million pounds of cigarette butt waste — largely made of a plastic-like material called cellulose acetate — are ultimately flung to the ground annually, according to the World Health Organization. Read more…
More about Science, Psychology, Cigarettes, Litter, and Anthropocene