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Worst pollutants. Volunteers gather the cigarette butts they collected from the Badoc beach.
By Leilanie G. Adriano
Staff Reporter
Badoc, Ilocos Norte—A group of youth volunteers from Ilocos Norte and neighboring Ilocos Sur jointly conducted a coastal clean-up on Sunday at the La Virgen Milagrosa cove in this town, picking up 4,538 pieces of cigarette butts and at least 238 kilograms of non-biodegradable wastes.
While encouraging everyone to learn to protect the environment, Patricia Dacanay-Diaz, president of the Movement Against Plastic Pollution (MAPP) in Ilocos Norte has reminded beach goers to dispose of their garbage properly.
According to Ms. Diaz, most of the collected non-biodegradable trashes came from picnickers and smokers who are apparently careless about the world they live.
In time for the Earth Day celebration, the MAPP mostly composed of young environment activists together with the Amianan Outdoor Recreation Group, Ballog Adventures and Let’s Better Ilocos Sur organized the activity dubbed as “We Love Ilocoast: An Earth Day coastal and underwater clean-up where north meets south”.
“Together with more than 76 volunteers, we managed to collect 14 full sacks of non-biodegradable trashes from the coast, two sacks underwater, equating to 237.9 kilos; and 4,538 pieces of cigarette butts,” she reported in her social media account.
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According to a new environment study, cigarette butts—not plastic straws—are the worst contaminant of oceans.
This is because used cigarette butts are full of toxins, which can leach into the ground and waterways, damaging living organisms that come into contact with them.
Cigarette butts are composed of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic, which can take an estimated two to 25 years to decompose.
“Cigarette butts may seem small, but with several trillion butts littered every year, the toxic chemicals add up! Smoking is already bad for your health, don’t make it bad for the environment as well,” Ms. Diaz underscored.