Black Nazarene devotees told not to litter Manila streets on Thursday

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Devotees of the Black Nazarene were reminded Wednesday not to throw litter in the streets during Thursday procession in downtown Manila, including even tiny bits of trash like cigarette butts.

Pollution watchdog EcoWaste Coalition expressed serious concern about the dangers posed by cigarette butts and other such litter to public health and the environment.

“If the smokers among the devotees will not be persuaded not to smoke, the event will surely generate millions of cigarette butts that are often carelessly tossed on the ground or flicked into plant boxes or pots,” said Tin Vergara, zero waste campaigner of EcoWaste.

“Cigarette butts are undeniably the most obvious litter in our surroundings that we often take for granted because they are small and light and appear to be insignificant,” she said in a statement. “On the contrary, it is not a litter of little consequence. Butt litter is ugly and, worse, it is toxic even to non-smoking creatures in the ocean.”

Vergara said most cigarette filters were made of cellulose acetate plastic fibers “that are very slow to degrade, persisting in the environment for a long time and posing hazards to both humans and animals.”

She pointed out that because of their small size and light weight, discarded butts are easily carried by wind and rain into the canals, rivers and the sea.

Birds and fishes mistake butts for food, causing not only digestive obstruction but also the ingestion of harmful chemicals in the filter such as arsenic, cadmium and lead, she said.

EcoWaste’s advocacy partner Dr. Maricar Limpin, the executive director of Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Alliance-Philippines, said the best and simplest way to curb the problem of cigarette butts was for people who smoke to quit the habit.

“To get rid of the health and environmental hazards posed by butt litter, we appeal to tobacco consumers to switch to a healthy lifestyle and completely kick the addiction by not using cigarettes, cigars and even e-cigarettes,” she said. “Not smoking avoids exposing others to the dreaded effects of second-hand smoke on top of the hazards caused by cigarette butt litter.”

Citing statistics from the latest Ocean Conservancy’s marine debris, EcoWaste said 2,117,931 pounds of cigarettes or cigarette filters out of the total 10,149,988 pounds of debris items were collected in 97 countries during the international coastal cleanup activities in 2012.

According to the same report, 276,499 pounds of food wrappers were collected in the Philippines, followed by 162,532 pounds of cigarette filters and 148,878 pounds of plastic bags.

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