{"id":307,"date":"2016-05-31T12:56:15","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T12:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/?p=307"},"modified":"2016-05-31T12:56:15","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T12:56:15","slug":"butts-are-a-bit-of-a-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/2016\/05\/31\/butts-are-a-bit-of-a-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Butts are a bit of a problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sibo<\/a><\/p>\n

Lately scientists have figured out that cigarette butts are one of the most abundant types of litter found around. Studies estimate that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year.<\/p>\n

Much worse, it\u2019s one of nastiest, deadliest forms of waste.<\/p>\n

People who would not dream of pitching a cool drink tin out of the car window will happily chuck a burning butt out. Not particularly caring that it can set fire to something. Burning butts are often the cause of serious veldt fires.<\/p>\n

People also drop them on pavements or into gutters, where the wind blows them into storm waters and other places.<\/p>\n

They also flick butts casually into water \u2013 dams, the sea and rivers.<\/p>\n

You probably wouldn\u2019t flick a cigarette butt into your swimming pool \u2013 but why not? Because you or your family might swallow it whilst swimming and that would be horrible.<\/p>\n

So why not care if a fish, bird or animal chomps it instead?<\/p>\n

Cigarette butts are tiny little bundles of toxins. They are poisonous. They get into our marine ecosystems and cause havoc with the wildlife and the quality of the water.<\/p>\n

We all know that water is extremely precious.<\/p>\n

Due to the fact that cigarette filters are specifically designed to accumulate toxins, each butt can contain up to 60 known human carcinogens including\u2026 arsenic, formaldehyde, chromium and lead. In fact, there are around 1,400 potential chemical additives.<\/p>\n

Toxicological data has shown that these chemicals from discarded butts are capable of leaching into surrounding water where they can hurt aquatic life. Nicotine has been shown to be lethal to various fish, crustaceans, zooplankton, and other aquatic organisms, as well as being a known insecticide.<\/p>\n

On top of leeching toxins, cigarette butts present an ingestion, choking and poisoning hazard to wildlife who mistake them for dinner!<\/p>\n

Cigarette filters are also\u00a0composed of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that can hang around in the environment for long periods of time. Plastics of this sort have been found in the stomachs of sea turtles, fish, birds, whales and other marine creatures.<\/p>\n

You know what is also really scary \u2013 even those people who put their cigarettes out in the designated places have no guarantee that their butts won\u2019t also end up in the water. The bins get emptied. Butts are chucked onto rubbish dumps. Here they are blown around and it\u2019s highly likely that they end up where they shouldn\u2019t as well.<\/p>\n

So what is the answer? \u00a0Stop smoking of course!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately scientists have figured out that cigarette butts are one of the most abundant types of litter found around. Studies estimate that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year. Much worse, it\u2019s one of nastiest, deadliest forms of waste. People who would not dream of pitching a cool drink tin … Continue reading “Butts are a bit of a problem”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31,16,50,52,8,7],"tags":[19,29,9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.sibo.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}