Yes, Your Cigarette Butt Is A Form of Plastic

                                                         Karen Mason/Facebook

Cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate, a natural form of plastic.  Although natural, it degrades slowly and isn't recyclable.  Butts litter the world's beaches.

Cigarette butts were the most common item of all types of rubbish collected from beaches globally, according to a report by Ocean Conservancy last year.

“Tobacco butts are so ubiquitous that most of us have become blind to them,” said Rachel Kippen, of the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition. “There are 4.5 trillion of them littering our streets, parks and beaches around the globe.

“Most people don’t realise that butts are made from cellulose acetate, a plastic that never entirely degrades.

“These filters provide no health benefit to smokers but create a lasting environmental threat, especially for the ocean, when they are inappropriately discarded – which most are.”

They are also inedible.