E-Cigarettes Sucking More Than You Might Think...
Surfrider "Butts-n-Bits"
I thought we had our hands full with regular cigarette butts, you know, the non-biodegradable, acetate (plastic), "filter" that does nothing to make inhaled smoke any safer. The same little gems of which over 5 trillion are consumed globally each year. Clean up efforts by the city of San Francisco alone, are estimated near 7 million dollars annually. And I can tell you as personal witness, a whole boatload of butts, missed by said clean up efforts, wash off of the streets of San Francisco (and Marin) every day, and float out into the Bay where they can finally get to leaching their toxins and poisoning aquatic life.
Now we have the e-cigarette! Nevermind that they're selling them in flavors like bubble gum, chocolate, and peach - Who on earth are they catering to with that? So mysterious.
Once finished with an e-cig, it is considered e-waste. I'm no detective, but I have a hunch they're just being thrown "away". One of the reasons I think this is because most e-waste programs aren't yet accepting them, so there's that.
For now, I guess everyone should just hang on to all of the batteries, and little plastic e-juice bottles, and plastic hookah tubes. Just hold tight, obviously big tobacco is working around the clock to solve this one.
See?!
"Just toss your used e-cig in the trash!" Yep, just like we already do with all of our plastic bottle caps, candy wrappers, straws, and plastic forks and spoons!
Problem = SOLVED!