Beach communities affected by cigarette butt litter
By CHRISTINA YOON Special to the Daily Press
CITY HALL Although much ado has been made about smokers’ contributions to poor public health, smoking in Los Angeles County has marine consequences as well.
A survey conducted by the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works found that residents drop almost 600,000 cigarette butts on the ground a month, or more than 7 million butts a year. “Many Los Angeles residents don’t realize that the cigarette butts they flick on the street or throw out of their car window can eventually end up in the ocean,” said Dean D. Efstathiou, the acting director of the county’s Department of Public Works. “The impact of this litter on the environment, where we live and raise our children, is horrifying.”
Butts tossed on the ground instead of ashtrays and trash cans are often washed into the county’s underground storm drain system by rain or dry-weather water flow such as over-watered lawns or water used to wash cars in people’s driveways.
The impact of small litter in drains is especially pertinent in beach communities such as Santa Monica. The Ocean Conservancy recently announced that six million pounds of trash were collected in just one day on beaches worldwide and one-third of the items came from smokers.
“People don’t equate littering with things ending up in the ocean and harming animals,” said Neal Shapiro, the urban runoff management coordinator at City Hall. “Sometimes people are visiting, come from places where sewage and runoff go to a treatment facility, so they just don’t know. Then there are people who just don’t care, dumping cigarettes out the window.”
Although the streets of Downtown Santa Monica are littered with hundreds of tiny white butts on any given day, the smokers interviewed said that they avoided throwing their used cigarettes on the street.
Brandon Wise TRASHY: A survey conducted by the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works found that residents drop almost 600,000 cigarette butts on the ground a month, or more than 7 million butts a year. Butts tossed on the ground instead of ashtrays and trash cans are often washed into the county’s underground storm drain system by rain or dry-weather water flow such as overwatered lawns or water used to wash cars in people’s driveways.
“In the street, I’ll put them out on the side of a trash can and throw it in there,”said Lisa Phipps, who lives in Culver City and works in Santa Monica. “Honestly, if there’s nothing around, I’ll throw them on the ground, but in Santa Monica there are lots of garbage cans.”
Barbara Monahan of West Los Angeles echoed the observation.
“Trash cans seem to be plentiful here,”she said. “If there’s no ashtray around I’ll stamp it out and throw it in the garbage.”
Monahan said that she’s sure to be conscientious of her cigarette disposal as smokers in the area are criticized enough as it is.
“We’re pariahs, you know,” she said. The Santa Monica Office of Sustainability and the Environment requires public and private buildings within the city to set up structures to prevent urban runoff such as cigarette butts from ending up in the ocean or recycled water. The main library on Santa Monica Boulevard, for example, has various devices in its parking lot to pre-treat water runoff that is later re-used for irrigation.
Recent legislation in Santa Monica has designated specific smoking areas on the Santa Monica Pier and prohibited smoking on the beach to prevent butts from floating or flying in the wind and landing in the ocean.
Despite these city-mandated restrictions, Shapiro said that the most crucial part of curbing cigarette litter is to continue to spread information about the negative impact of careless decisions such as putting out a cigarette on the sidewalk or throwing it in a gutter.
“It boils down to a general lack of education,” he said. “It just doesn’t sink in with some people.”
As for solutions, reducing harmful runoff is not at all complicated.
“Don’t put anything on our streets,” Shapiro said, “and put any trash in trash receptacles.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 26, 2008. Read the original PDF.