September 2019: At the 4th place in the top 6 of the litter most often found on World Cleanup Day, are the cigarette packets of Marlboro. Not surprising, because it is by far the most sold cigarette brand in the Netherlands. A slight ‘improvement’ by the way, because in 2018 Marlboro was still number 1.
Plastic filter
The Marlboro Man, who doesn’t know him? The first actor who played him was a committed non-smoker and warned his children that smoking is unhealthy. When they asked him why he advertised Marlboro, he immediately resigned. His successor did smoke and died of lung cancer, which, according to his widow, was a consequence of all the cigarettes he was forced to smoke during the shootings.
By now, we all know that cigarettes are unhealthy, but just as unhealthy – for the environment – are all those cigarette packs wrapped in plastic cellophane. And all cigarette butts! Because cigarette filters also contain plastic (cellulose acetate), something few people know.
10 million kilos of cigarette butts
It is estimated that six trillion cigarettes are produced worldwide every year, three-quarters of which end up in the environment rather than in an ashtray. Milieu Centraal has calculated that no less than ten million kilos of cigarette butts end up on the streets of the Netherlands every year!
An incredible number but given the fact that just over 20% of the adult Dutch population smokes, it would be around 2.6 million smokers. If they throw one cigarette butt on the street every day on average (what does a cigarette butt weigh? 10 grams?), then you are indeed already almost at those ten million kilos a year.
Eight million kilos of those are dealt with, but the remaining two million kilos remain lying around, many of which then end up in our canals, ditches, streams and finally in the sea and the ocean. Unfortunately, cigarette filters are an important ‘ingredient’ of the plastic soup.
Butt robot
One of the nicest applications for World Cleanup Day 2020 comes from the startup Techtics in The Hague. Together with students of the TU Delft they have developed a robot that picks up cigarette butts from the beach: the Beach Bot. Do you want to see the robot in action? Then come on September 19th to the Black Path in Scheveningen where a special demonstration starts at 15.00 hours.
Or go pick up cigarette butts on your own and get warmed up for World Cleanup Day by participating in the butt-picking day Plastic PeukMeuk 2020 on Saturday September 5th. Plastic PeukMeuk 2020.
– Elles Tukker, communicatiemanager, Plastic Soup Foundation
Will you join World Cleanup Day? Take a look at www.worldcleanupday.nl to see the cleanup actions that have already been set up in your neighbourhood or put a cleanup action on the map yourself!
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