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Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

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Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#151

Post by snarfy »

odiroot wrote: post #96
snarfy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are assholes to smokers. Like, it's socially acceptable to be assholes to smokers these days. I've had random people on an almost daily basis harass me for smoking. Flicking my butts on the ground was a big fuck you to all of the non smokers that harassed me.

I'm sorry but are you five or something? There are very good reasons to treat smokers negatively and you, completely without shame, gave us another one.

This thread all illustrates my point.

> I'm sorry but are you five or something?

Do you not see the hypocrisy? If you re-read your own comment without the above line, it's much more powerful. By adding it your are only continuing the cycle of people being asses to each other, in this case name calling.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#152

Post by darkmighty »

belorn wrote: post #148
kevcampb wrote: post #60

The Ocean Conservancy report has been cited by quite a few articles now, and it pains me every time I see it. As ever, the conclusions drawn are quite misleading. 1) The source of the data is cleanup on beaches, not ocean trash. If anything it's more likely to be representative of items discarded on beaches or waterways. 2) Cigarette butts are greatest purely in number of individual pieces, not in terms of weight or…

If we combine that data with data on annual amount of plastic being thrown into the ocean, we get 4 tons of fishing nets per year being lost by the part of the finish industry that use fishing nets. Buying new fishing nets are quite expensive, and by experience, fishermen tend to spend a large part of the year repairing them. I wonder what the lost rate is per fisherman, national region, and caught fish.

Skimming the articles it estimates there are 42000 tons of mega(large) plastics, of which 86% would be fishing nets, so 36120 tons. Didn't find the per annum data, but that's certainly much more than 4 tons a year (else it would've taken 9030 years to get current weight), I'd guess at least 2000 tons per year.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#153

Post by krisroadruck »

bpizzi wrote: post #149
krisroadruck wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to clarify... its rainy outside. You don't want to get wet. They don't want to get wet. They are only allowed to smoke outside. I'm not saying its not a dick move mind you, but maybe consider that they too wanted to be comfortable and outside is the only place they are allowed to smoke.

Nope, they can smoke at home, literally 5min before (the are grown adults). Or walk to the other side on the street, 10 meters away, and smoke under a shelter. Or maybe just skip that one cigarette. Or bring an umbrella. I'll stop here. No, there's no excuses. It's just a case of not having any interest in the other human right next to you.

So in your mind, the only way this guy can not be an asshole is if he prioritizes your preferences over his own, but you don't apply this same litmus to yourself. You could walk across the street. You could bring an umbrella. You could decide that second hand smoke from a single cigarette in an open area outside will have effectively zero health consequences for you and maybe to just let it go this one time. Again I actually agree with you that he is kinda being a dick, the point of my previous comment and this one is I find it odd that you have one set of standards for how others should treat your desires and a completely separate one for the way you handle theirs.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#154

Post by pferde »

krisroadruck wrote: post #127
bpizzi wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe, just maybe we should try to remember that these folks are PEOPLE and still deserve to be treated with a modicum of decency Purely anecdotal, but this is happening far too often: it's a bad weather day, waiting under the 5m long city tram station's getting protected from the rain, then someone comes and sit right next to me, lightning it's damn cigarette like there was absolutely no problem. This is the kind…

So to clarify... its rainy outside. You don't want to get wet. They don't want to get wet. They are only allowed to smoke outside. I'm not saying its not a dick move mind you, but maybe consider that they too wanted to be comfortable and outside is the only place they are allowed to smoke.

What if my hobby was to juggle stinky shit? Should everyone around accept me, my dirty hands and my clothes stained and reeking of shit, if I decided to relax juggling shit during a work break?

I view smokers in the same way. It's a smelly habit that affects everyone around you, and you can't be surprised that you are liked less by some because of it.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#155

Post by jmull »

kevcampb wrote: post #60

The Ocean Conservancy report has been cited by quite a few articles now, and it pains me every time I see it. As ever, the conclusions drawn are quite misleading. 1) The source of the data is cleanup on beaches, not ocean trash. If anything it's more likely to be representative of items discarded on beaches or waterways. 2) Cigarette butts are greatest purely in number of individual pieces, not in terms of weight or…

The general problem with this kind of criticism is that it can be leveled at any article citing a statistic.

No matter what value an article chooses to highlight they could have highlighted a different one. True... but so what?

Here I guess the root of your objection is that the article seems to conflate the ocean-sides with the entire ocean. That's fair: the article is really about ocean sides, but in a few places it refers generally to the ocean. It appears to be purposeful, too, since it's in the headline and lede while the rest of article is straight. Still, that the headline and lede is overly strong is, unfortunately, almost a universally applicable criticism these days. Headlines and ledes are written for attention-grabbing not accuracy. That's a problem not of individual articles, but of a system that lives on click-through.

A less superficial criticism would be to examine the degree to which the main point of the article -- that cigarette butt pollution is a problem that should be addressed -- is fair, or whether it's making this out to be a significantly more substantial problem than it really is. (Remember, the context here is activism to reduce pollution, where there was recently a lot of focus and traction on plastic drinking straws, for which there was some backlash, with people arguing that there was a lot of focus on a tiny part of the problem. So a really good question here is, is this just more plastic straw BS or is there a really issue here?)

And keep in mind that if cigarette butts are a coastal pollution problem it doesn't mean something else, like fishing nets in the ocean, isn't a problem.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#157

Post by GordonS »

standardUser wrote: post #102
woodruffw wrote: post #5

Only tangentially related, but I am continually astonished by the absence of any sort of social norms surrounding cigarette butt disposal. I have (otherwise environmentally conscious!) friends who smoke, and I've personally witnessed them flick their cigarettes into gutters and on streets. As a serious question, without judgment: are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon?

Former smoker here and guilty of throwing many butts on the ground even though I find any other form of litter unthinkable. When I was much younger I believed that cigarette butts biodegraded in a couple years. No big deal, right? I distinctly remember reading this on a sign at a campsite when I was about 18. Turns out, that's an ideal scenario and butts can take up to 10 years to break down naturally, and even then…

Thanks for explaining, and I really don't mean to kick you while you're down here, but even if butts did degrade in 2 years, that means they're lying around a long time for birds or animals to eat or choke on them.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#158

Post by mirimir »

woodruffw wrote: post #5

Only tangentially related, but I am continually astonished by the absence of any sort of social norms surrounding cigarette butt disposal. I have (otherwise environmentally conscious!) friends who smoke, and I've personally witnessed them flick their cigarettes into gutters and on streets. As a serious question, without judgment: are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon?

It's the old "dilution is the solution to pollution" mantra. The world seems so huge, and a cigarette butt so small. It's obviously a fallacy. Because there are just so damn many people.

What persists are the mouthpiece (plastic) and filter (synthetic fiber). Tobacco degrades very quickly, and paper within a year or so.

So when I smoked, I never left butts behind. For one thing, I was typically short of money, so I kept the tobacco in a small bag. I mainly smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, and typically balled up the paper, and put it in a pocket. Sometimes I just dropped the paper, I admit. And sometimes I even saved it, for reuse.

But I've also made the argument that people are quite comfortable polluting in ~invisible ways. For example, let's say that there's a road full of motor vehicles. And someone flicks out a butt. Fellow drivers will typically grumble, or yell at them. But they don't realize that they're all polluting far more, through emissions of SO2, NOx, CO2, hydrocarbons, particulates, and so on.

Re: Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash

#159

Post by loteck »

matz1 wrote: post #12
woodruffw wrote: post #5

Only tangentially related, but I am continually astonished by the absence of any sort of social norms surrounding cigarette butt disposal. I have (otherwise environmentally conscious!) friends who smoke, and I've personally witnessed them flick their cigarettes into gutters and on streets. As a serious question, without judgment: are there any smokers on HN who can explain the phenomenon?

What is there to explain? Its convenient.

"People incapable of guilt do tend to have a good time."
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