Cigarette Butts are bad for the environment

Cigarette butts are the most common form of anthropogenic (man-made) litter in the world, as approximately 5.6 trillion cigarettes are smoked every year worldwide. Of those it is estimated that 4.5 trillion cigarette butts become litter every year.

The core of most cigarette filters, the part that looks like white cotton, is actually a form of plastic called cellulose acetate. By itself, cellulose acetate is very slow to degrade in our environment.

Depending on the conditions of the area the cigarette butt is discarded in, it can take 18 months to 10 years for a cigarette filter to decompose.

But that isn't the worst of it.

Used cigarette filters are full of toxins, which can leach into the ground and waterways, damaging living organisms that come into contact with them.

Most filters are discarded with bits of tobacco still attached to them as well, further polluting our environment with nicotine, which is poisonous.

Some aspects that have been proposed to control the disposal of cigarette butts are:

1. To make sanctions stiff penalties for littering of cigarette filters; for example Washington state imposes a penalty of $1,025 for littering cigarette filters. 
2. To develop better biodegradable filters. Much of this work relies heavily on the research about the secondary mechanism for photodegradation as stated above. 
3. To use cigarette packs with a compartment for discarded cigarette butts, implementing monetary deposits on filters, increasing the availability of butt receptacles, and expanding public education. It may even be possible to ban the sale of filtered cigarettes altogether on the basis of their adverse environmental impact.