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As a resident of Hamilton, I know many of our city’s residents smoke cigarettes regularly.

In 2016, nearly 20 per cent of Hamiltonians reported smoking. Given the health effects of smoking, I could encourage people to quit by providing links to resources such as STOP (Smoking Treatment for Ontario Patients) or hamiltonquitssmoking.com, but I am aware that smoking is actively declining in Ontario, with Stats Canada reporting a decline in cigarette smoking of just over two per cent a year between 2019 and 2020.

Despite cigarette smoking being on the decline, I am still regularly reminded of Hamilton’s active smoking population due to the number of cigarette butts that have accumulated on our sidewalks, street corners and at bus stops. Of all the cigarettes smoked in Hamilton, around 65 per cent are littered in the street. Cigarette butts are not only a reminder of unpleasant second-hand cigarette smoke for non-smokers, they are also an eyesore in our communities and one of the most common and well known forms of plastic pollution.

Each year in Canada, 8,000 tonnes of plastic waste is generated, and some of this is due to cigarette pollution. Cigarette filters are made of a plastic called cellulose acetate. These filters not only contain this plastic, but also nicotine, heavy metals and all the other chemicals known to be contained in cigarettes. This means that any cigarette butts nonchalantly tossed away also carry those harmful chemicals onto the ground where they leach out of that filter and into our environment.

Not only do cigarette butts impact our local environment, but they regularly make their way into our watersheds and eventually our great lakes and oceans. This is obviously a problem not only for Hamilton, but Canada as a whole, so what can we do to eliminate or reduce the number of cigarette butts under our feet?

To reduce our output of plastic pollution from cigarettes, the City of Hamilton needs to raise awareness of this issue and push for smokers to take more care with their discarded filters.

The City of Hamilton has already begun to integrate more accessible ashtrays into garbage cans where smoking is permitted in the city, but more can be done to provide options for proper cigarette butt disposal and there needs to be a more visible campaign on this issue. Currently, we have public ashtrays but little incentive for smokers to use them, especially if they aren’t aware of the bad side of butts or don’t care about the environment.

If we can’t convince smokers to alter their habits, then perhaps we can take things higher. Companies have tackled the issue of cigarette butt pollution by developing biodegradable cigarette filters. These have the added benefit of being cheaper than traditional filters. A typical cellulose acetate cigarette filter can take years to break down, while biodegradable filters can break down in as little as seven days. While this method would not remove the chemical pollution caused by cigarette filters, it would largely eliminate plastic pollution from cigarette butts.

Additionally, I have started to see vape cartridges or pods, which are entirely made of plastic, being tossed directly on the ground just like cigarette filters. So promoting vaping over cigarette use may not help this issue if this behaviour continues.

Even though cigarettes are declining in popularity, they are a large source of plastic pollution that we should not turn a blind eye to. I hope this message inspires change in our local community whether that is individual change in our smoking population, a higher investment from the City of Hamilton, or a call to action for cigarette companies to incorporate new technologies into their products. So let’s get off our butts and make a change Hamilton!

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