Featured Change Agent: Mike Davis is Recycling Pollution into Solutions

Each week, EarthFirst.com will be featuring a new ‘Change Agent’ from Changents.com, a social media site that connects people who are doing good in the world with a support system of advocates, donors, publicity generators and fans.

This week we’re putting the spotlight on Mike Davis, a change agent who’s fighting to turn millions of chemical-filled discarded cigarette butts into cigarette collection bins.  That’s right, he’s pushing the ‘Responsible Smokers Act’, which seeks to educate the public about the environmental and health impacts of the improper disposal of cigarette butts, which contain carcinogens.

The rationale behind Mike’s idea is simple: smokers make their own choice to expose themselves to the harmful substances in cigarettes.  But when they litter the streets, waterways, parks and other public spaces with the remnants of those cigarettes, they’re infringing on non-smokers’ rights not to be contact with those substances.  There hasn’t been a lot of research into whether improperly discarded cigarette butts might be contaminating our water and soil.  As Mike points out, cigarette filters were created to trap and contain many of the harmful ingredients in cigarettes – so, how do we know those toxins aren’t getting to the rest of us through other means?

Mike Davis’ solution is not only to make the public more aware of this problem, but to actually recycle used cigarette filters, which are made of cellulose acetate, into cigarette collection bins. He’s currently working with the patent holder of cigarette butt recycling and hopes to have a program in place soon.

Mike is currently seeking someone with a degree in business and knowledge about startups and running non-profit organizations to help him develop his business model.  He’s also seeking a 501 ©(3) fiscal sponsorship so he can begin accepting donations, a chemist to help him in the process of recycling the cigarette filters and a web designer willing to donate their time and skills to help him build a website for the Responsible Smokers Act.

If you can provide any of these services or want to help Mike in another way, join Changents as a backer.  Respond to his action requests, volunteer, give Mike support or just help spread the word.  Joining Changents is easy and becoming a backer will allow you to help out other change agents seeking to make the world a better place as well.

Link [Changents]

Cigarettes Aren’t Just Bad for Your Lungs – They Hurt the Environment, Too

Cigarettes are bad, mmkay? Of course, you already know that. You’re bombarded with it practically every day due to the last decade or so of efforts to educate the public about how harmful cigarettes are. That doesn’t stop most of you from doing it, though. Chances are, if you’re a smoker, you choose to ignore it and go about your daily cigarette-smoking life – because it’s your life, right? Sound familiar? Well, if you care about the environment, perhaps you should rethink your ‘it’s my decision’ stance.

From Simran Sethi’s ‘Life Cycle: Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em’ on The Huffington Post:

Our little tobacco friends begin, as do so many things, in a field within a warm climate, where tobacco plants are doused with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Once harvested by many hands–sometimes those of a child–the leaves are dried and cured for upwards of three years and finally shipped from the company farm to the company producer. That’s when the fun stuff gets added. The same ammonia that cleans your toilet helps your brain absorb nicotine more quickly. A chemical similar to rocket fuel keeps the tip of the cigarette burning efficiently. A little formaldehyde here, a little fungicide there. By the time leaves are cut down to size, adorned with filters, nestled in foil and wrapped in cellophane, one carton of cigarettes has wreaked a lot of havoc.

Deforestation is the most direct environmental repercussion of the approximately ten gazillion cigarettes smoked in the world daily. Wood is used just about every step in production–to cure tobacco, to wrap the leaves with paper, to box them up with cardboard. A cigarette manufacturing machine produces up to 14,000 smokes a minute, blowing through four miles of paper every hour. For every 300 cigarettes, one tree is consumed.

Of course, that’s not all – tobacco production in developing countries uses child labor and causes food shortages by diverting farmland usage. All those butts also end up in the landfill where they take at least 25 years to decompose.

Not enough reason to quit? Simran recommends trying rolling your own cigarettes, which will reduce waste and the amount of chemicals you inhale (but won’t help your lungs). Or, you could try a brand without additives like American Spirit. Or, you know, you could just quit. I’m just sayin’.

Link [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Flickr user SuperFantastic