Did you know that each year 4.5 trillion cigarettes around the globe are winding up as trash?
According to Ocean Conservancy, the most commonly recovered item in its annual International Coastal Cleanup event is the cigarette butt.
Each year in America, government agencies spend over $3.5 billion to remove cigarette butts from the environment.
When billions of cigarette butts, which are made of a plastic called cellulose acetate and contain between 4,000-7,000 chemicals enter the ocean, they are mistaken for food and end up poisoning sea life.
If you smoke, don’t discard your cigarette butt in the gutter or on the beach – instead, please, place your cigarette butt in a trash bin.
Please support The Ochre Project and Sea Shepherd Australia because they’re protecting sea life!
Earth Dr. Reese Halter’s latest book is “Shepherding the Sea: The Race to Save Our Oceans.”