Early in my career as an environmental activist I found the idea of litter as an environmental issue laughable and misguided. What can I say -- it's far from the only thing I was wrong about when I was young. Here's a few bits of butt information from the New YorkTimes:
- Keep America Beautiful and the Ocean Conservancy estimate that butts are at least 28% of all items littered nationwide
- Butts are not biodegradable [and] can release can release toxic chemicals including nicotine, benzene and cadmium
- [R]ecent experiments had shown that one butt has enough poisons to kill half the minnows in a liter of water — a standard laboratory test for toxins — in 96 hours
To avoid littering butts you can carry reusable or disposable pocket ashtrays, available locally from Keep Kansas City Beautiful and lots of places on the web.
From bootstrap analysis, a blog of "chronicles and musings of an urban field ecologist."
Image from SAS.org.












