KT for Good: That cigarette butt you left in the sand poisons Earth

The first part of our series is about the most littered item in the world: Cigarette butts.

While smoking cigarettes is already a filthy habit for the body, it seems smokers are also on a mission to dirty up our beloved planet with cigarette butt litter.
Environmentalists and waste departments globally have reported cigarette stubs and butts as the most littered item on Earth. About 4.5 trillion cigarettes are discarded each year worldwide, according to a US-based non-profit health organisation, the Truth Initiative.
Not only do they make our cities look dirtier, they are also toxic to our home planet. Cigarette butts don't decompose easily - it can take up to several years - and they release toxic chemicals into the environment.
You might think that the UAE is an exception, but look closer. In 2017, the Dubai Municipality collected 400,000 cigarette butts from the beaches with the help of over 2,000 volunteers. Even though there is a Dh500 fine for cigarette butt littering, more than 30kg of it is cleaned from the Sheikh Zayed Road every day. Figures, reported previously by KT, also show that 715 cigarettes are smoked per adult per year in the UAE.
Abdulmajeed Saifaie, director of waste management department at the Dubai Municipality, told Khaleej Times that road intersections, central islands on roads, and open market areas are the places that are most affected by this kind of littering.
Explaining the various ways the municipality combats littering, Saifaie said:
"Cigarette butts are cleaned in daily work programmes in different areas. There are waste baskets throughout the emirate, with a special place to dispose of cigarette butts. We also provide equipment for waste disposal and conduct collective work campaigns to remove cigarette butts from the streets."
And his message to the public is: "Support the Dubai Municipality's efforts to spread environmental awareness among the various segments of the community, and learn the importance of protecting our surroundings against harmful behaviours."
Even though litterbugs may have turned a blind eye to the damage cigarette butts do to our planet, there are environmental organisations in the UAE that come to our rescue - the Emirates Environmental Group, Azraq, Emirates Marine Environmental Group, to name a few.
Natalie Banks, managing director of Azraq, told Khaleej Times that 30 to 40 per cent of items collected during coastal and urban clean-ups in the UAE are cigarette butts.
"The reason being is that cigarette butts are still socially acceptable to be thrown on the ground, stomped all out and people walk away. But they're really littering.
"In Dubai, that is a finable offence but, of course, there are issues with its enforcement," she said.
Speaking about the negative impacts cigarette butt littering can have on the marine environment and humans, Banks said that cigarettes have filters made from plastic, which are not easily recycled.
"Marine life are being entangled in marine debris, or they actually end up swallowing and digesting the marine debris. This can cause them to not get the nutrients that they would normally get because their stomachs are full of plastic, rather than the normal food that they should be eating.
"There are also reports that humans who have consumed fish that have digested plastic can experience adverse impacts on their reproductive system, their development system and their hormones."
Banks added that cigarette butts take about 30 years to biodegrade. Their filters have arsenic, lead, nicotine, and ethyl phenol, all of which leak into environment.
So, next time you spot a smoker who is about to litter, remind him or her of how such a dirty habit is not only damaging the planet - it's also putting human and marine life at risk. If that doesn't work, remind him of the Dh500 fine.
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com

• KT For Good