Luckily I am too young to have to quit smoking because I’ve never started – but I know it’s a really hard habit to kick.
The truth is that smoking‘s bad for you.
Not only can it cause lung disease; it can also cause heart problems and can cause cancer almost anywhere in your body too.
Luckily it’s now illegal for adults to smoke with their children in the car because second-hand smoke is almost as bad for you as the real thing.
At least people who smoke choose to do so.
The kids who get to breathe their parents’ smoke have no choice.
That’s just nasty!
Not only is smoking bad for people; it’s also bad for the environment and animals.
Lately scientists have figured out that cigarette butts are one of the most abundant types of litter found around.
That means there are plenty of butts out there.
Studies estimate that 4.5-trillion cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year.
What makes this worse is it’s one of the nastiest, deadliest forms of waste.
People who would not dream of pitching a cold drink tin out of a car window will happily chuck a burning butt out, not particularly caring that it can set fire to something – and they do too.
Burning butts are often the cause of serious veld fires.
People also drop them on pavements or into gutters, where the wind will blow them into storm-water drains and all sorts of other places.
Beaches are ideal for putting out butts.
They are one huge ashtray, right?
Wrong.
Or… they flick butts casually into water – dams, the sea and rivers.
Cigarette butts are tiny little bundles of toxins; in other words, they are poisonous.
They get into our marine ecosystems and cause havoc with the wildlife and the quality of the water.
And we all know that water is extremely precious.
You know what is also really scary – even those people who put their cigarettes out in the designated places have no guarantee that their butts won’t also end up in the water.
The bins get emptied and butts are chucked onto rubbish dumps.
Then they get blown around and it’s highly likely they also end up where they shouldn’t.
Take care where you put those butts, please, people.
Sibo
