Karen Mason, a photographer and volunteer for the National Audubon Society, was nature stewarding on St. Pete Beach in Florida when she noticed a black skimmer feeding her chick a strange object.
She snapped a photo so she could examine the supposed food later. “I knew it wasn’t a fish but couldn’t tell what it was until I got home and blew it up,” Mason, 64, told the Huffington Post.
When she got home she blew up the photo and noticed that it was a cigarette butt.
“I don’t know if the chick ate it as I got distracted talking to some visitors,” Mason continued. “Usually the chicks will pick up things like pieces of wood but don’t actually eat them, so I’m hoping [the chick] put it down.”
Mason shared the photos on social media where they outraged many nature lovers.
She told the Today Show that this type of waste is completely unnecessary.
“This little chick might have swallowed something like this, and there’s no reason that people need to do this,” Mason said. “Cigarette butts are not big. They can take them home with them. If they can take their cellphones, they can certainly take some tiny little cigarette butt container along with them.”
Cigarette waste isn’t just a problem in Florida; the issue is worldwide. According to the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project, over five trillion cigarettes are sold globally every year, 300 billion of which are sold in the United States, and 98 percent of them have filters. At least a third of those filters are discarded directly into the environment where they eventually make their way to rivers, lakes, and the ocean.
Cigarette butts are non-biodegradable and while ultraviolet rays will eventually break them down, the toxic material never disappears.
So, if you’re not going to kick that habit anytime soon but want to help the environment, you can help by either switching to filterless cigarettes or rolling your own with a biodegradable filter.
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