Tobacco waste contains more than 7,000 toxic chemicals, including known human carcinogens, as well as arsenic and heavy metals, which are deposited in the environment. The World Health Organization report pointed out that "the serious threat posed by tobacco to the entire planet should be taken seriously, and turning a blind eye will pay a huge human, economic and environmental price."
In order to avoid cigarette butts polluting the environment, many countries around the world have banned smoking on beaches. In August 2019, Qinhuangdao City, Hebei Province began to implement the "Qinhuangdao City Smoking Control Measures", prohibiting smoking at seaside bathing beaches and beaches within the administrative area of Qinhuangdao City. Violators will be fined 50 to 200 yuan, and 4 tickets will be issued on the day of the ban, making it the first beach smoking ban area in the country. In 2021, Qinhuangdao City won the World Health Organization's "World No Tobacco Day Award" for setting up smoke-free beaches. However, a survey in 2023 showed that the two beaches in Shanhaiguan District, Qinhuangdao City were still seriously polluted by cigarette butts. Among them, the cigarette butts on the beach of Laolongtou Scenic Area had the highest density among the 14 beaches in 9 cities surveyed by Pen Touch Media in the same year. It is difficult to ban smoking on beaches, mainly because of the difficulty of supervision. The same problem also occurs abroad.
A survey of 14 beaches showed that the number of cigarette butts on the beach is highly correlated with the number of tourists, which means that the more popular the tourist beach, the more cigarette butts there will be, and there is almost no correlation with the number of sanitation workers. On beaches that are well cleaned, cigarette butts are almost the only identifiable garbage except for very small garbage debris. This is similar to the situation at other tourist attractions.
Beach cleaning activities have always been a common activity for the public to participate in reducing marine garbage, but the garbage picked up in the end still has nowhere to be disposed of and is still handled as municipal garbage, resulting in a waste of resources. From a cleaning perspective, cleaning the beach to keep it free of cigarette butts is very inefficient. The picture shows the working scene of sanitation workers cleaning the beach at Bailang Beach in Fangchenggang. Four sanitation workers are carrying dustpans and walking side by side while sweeping. A sanitation vehicle and driver are slowly following behind them. The area they have walked through is less than 1/20 of the beach area, which is costly and inefficient.
The University of Plymouth studied the working principle of a marine trash can, which continuously sucks water through a water pump and then filters it, just like a garbage collector that keeps running. But for every 3.6 pieces of trash captured by this device, one marine creature is caught. Similarly, filtering out small cigarette butts on the beach may harm the marine ecology and destroy the beauty of the beach.
3. Recycling of cigarette butts and establishing a recycling mechanism
After washing and alkaline heat treatment, cigarette butts can be recycled into acetate fiber and other materials, which can be used to make frisbees, ashtrays, playgrounds, and community parks. It takes about 2,000 cigarette butts to produce 1 kilogram of plastic, but because the cigarette butts at the recycling end are too small to be recycled specifically, for the recycling factory, the source and harmless treatment are the main problems, and the back-end products need to establish high-value recycled product applications.
Since cigarettes cannot be banned like other disposable plastics, organizations such as Pen Touch Media suggest establishing a cigarette butt deposit system, that is, the manufacturer collects a deposit for each cigarette sold, and the deposit can be returned after the consumer puts the cigarette butt into the cigarette butt recycling machine (or returns the cigarette butt to the cigarette sales point, which is then sent to the recycling machine). The cigarette butts in the machine are sent to the recycling plant and processed into plastic to form a business model. To establish a cigarette butt deposit system, it is necessary to set up a cigarette butt deposit management center, and the producer responsible for the recycling center (PRO) is responsible for managing the fund and coordinating producers, recyclers, and recycling companies. The deposit system can mobilize the public to participate in picking up cigarette butts, increase the recycling rate, and recycle a sufficient number of cigarette butts. However, if a recycling company produces a production capacity of 10,000 tons, it needs 20 billion cigarette butts to maintain the production of the cigarette butt recycling plant. The front-end recycling concentration still needs to be combined with the current recycling station. For the treatment of chemicals in cigarette butts, the environmental protection department also needs to provide exemption support for the harmless utilization after the treatment technology.
