Parisa Bahmanyar

10/22/14
UNST 124K

Annotated Bibliography
We see people litter all over the world every single day. Sometimes they are spitting their
gum out onto the streets, drop a food wrapper and dont pick it up, or toss their cigarette butt out
the window while driving or while they are walking around the streets. I see this every single
day. Portland State is supposed to be a tobacco-free campus, but I see at least 50 students
smoking on campus when Im there. Smoking cigarettes is a difficult habit to fight especially for
some people who are under a lot of stress or have been smoking for many years. People drop the
butts of their cigarettes all the time without second guessing what they are doing, but people also
forget that this is littering and bad for our environment. I think it is important that we stop
littering the streets little by little, and one simple way to stop this is by creating more places to
recycle cigarette butts around campus rather than tossing them in the trash or on the sidewalks.
1. Koch, Wendy. "Recycling Programs Tackle Problem of Cigarette
Butts."USATODAY.COM. N.p., 18 June 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
The first article I read, found on USA Todays website, was about recycling cigarette
butts. Ive always found cigarette butts to be a huge issue no matter where I am. I see them in the
suburbs of Portland, in the city, on campus and any time I travel out of state. Littering is illegal,
but nothing seems to ever get done about cigarette butts. Many places have lots of ash trays for
people to put the butts in, but I have noticed on campus and some places in Beaverton they dont
have any ash trays. The article I read talked about a company called TerraCycle, where they will
send UPS shipping labels already paid for so people can collect the cigarette butts to be recycled.
There is an up and coming company called Cigarette Butt Litter Dream Recycling that
takes the recycled butts of cigarettes and transforms them into different products. The leftover
tobacco and paper is disposed of because it cant be recycled. The article goes on to talk about
some east coast states fining people for littering cigarette butts when they are finished smoking.
Portland, Maine has a fine of $100 to anyone that litters the butts on the streets. This is smart
because that is a very large ticket for a problem that can be solved very easily. People can start
recycling their cigarette butts, collecting them in garbage bags instead of littering the streets.
A local resident in Ohio, Blake Burich, is working with other companies to start a
recycling program to get people involved and excited about recycling cigarette butts. San
Francisco collects a very small amount of money per smoke to pay for the cleanup of cigarette
butts. The article has ideas and methods already in action for recycling cigarette butts. These are
things that everyone all around the country can do, especially in Portland and on college
campuses.
2. Novotny, Thomas E., Kristen Lum, Elizabeth Smith, Vivian Wang, and Richard Barnes.
"Cigarettes Butts And The Case For An Environmental Policy On Hazardous Cigarette
Waste." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2009):
1691-705. Print.

Parisa Bahmanyar
10/22/14
UNST 124K

In the article I read titled Cigarettes Butts and the Case for an Environmental Policy on
Hazardous Cigarette Waste found on the International Journal of Environmental Research and
Public Health, the authors discuss the problem that comes with littering cigarette butts. They talk
about new ways to change the habits of humans so they stop littering the butts on the sides of the
roads. They have discussed ways to potentially create biodegradable filters in cigarettes making
it less harmful to litter on the streets and beaches. The authors also talk about possibly creating
fines on littering the butts to stop people from doing this. In the article, I read about how they
have already created new filters on cigarettes to be less harmful to the health of humans, but still
is not a bulletproof method. The article read, Cigarette filters are the single most collected item
in international beach cleanups each year. This wasnt very alarming to me because many
people who smoke enjoy smoking outside and because they are on the beach they probably just
toss the butts in the sand because they are not as many garbages on beaches as there are on
streets. Even then, people still litter butts on the streets, especially when theyre driving.
The article shows that the authors are clearly against people littering cigarette butts on
streets and want to find ways to end this because of the health hazards. They want to create
biodegradable filters on cigarettes to decrease the amount of non-biodegradable items littered
each year. One thing that was discussed in this article as well as in the first article above, the
collection of cigarette butts to be recycled is a new innovative idea to keep people from littering.
3. Coxworth, Ben. "City of Vancouver Launches Cigarette Butt Recycling Program."
Gizmag. N.p., 14 Nov. 2013. Web. 01 Nov. 2014.
In the article City of Vancouver launches cigarette butt recycling program the author
talks about the city of Vancouver, CA teaming with a company called TerraCycle, also
mentioned in the first annotation, to start encouraging people to recycle cigarette butts instead of
littering them on the streets and keeping them out of landfills. Cigarette butts are not
biodegradable so they pollute and litter the streets of Canada, as well as many other places all
over the world. In Canada they installed places for people to recycle their cigarette butts once
they are done smoking. This will help keep them out of the trash cans and off the streets.
The author of this article is in favor of getting the butts out of the landfills because the
cigarette butts are toxic and not biodegradable. It is clear that the author, Ben Coxworth, does not
believe that they should just be thrown on the streets and is in favor of TerraCycle teaming up
with the city to create a new way to recycle the butts. The article also states, It was found that
discarded cigarette butts could also be used for rust-proofing steel. The article talks about
TerraCycles use of the recycled butts and products they plan to create with the butts.

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4. Slaughter, E., R. M. Gersberg, K. Watanabe, J. Rudolph, C. Stransky, and T. E. Novotny.

"Toxicity of Cigarette Butts, and Their Chemical Components, to Marine and Freshwater
Fish." Tobacco Control (2011): I25-29. Print.
In the research paper I read online called Toxicity of cigarette butts, and their chemical
components, to marine and freshwater fish, it was discussed that the chemicals in the cigarette
tobacco and filters is harmful to aquatic life. Cigarette butts are littered in the streets, landfills,
and beaches and make their way into the oceans and rivers. The research paper discusses the
dangers of cigarettes, smoked and un-smoked. The article stated, Over 4000 chemicals may also
be introduced to the environment via cigarette particulate matter. The authors of this article
and research are clearly against the littering of cigarettes and the cigarette butts. The chemicals in
the cigarettes are dangerous to fish and other aquatic animals.
They tested the chemicals in the cigarettes to see the negative effect it had on fish and
other sea creatures. The cigarettes were found to be toxic due to all the chemicals in the
cigarettes in order to create the tobacco. The authors are continuing to do research and
experiments to fully understand the toxicity level of cigarettes and how it effects the lives of fish
and animals living in the oceans and rivers.