{"id":24966,"date":"2019-06-06T17:44:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T23:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/opinion-susan-knopf-put-those-butts-where-they-belong\/"},"modified":"2019-06-06T17:44:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T23:44:00","slug":"opinion-susan-knopf-put-those-butts-where-they-belong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/local-news\/opinion-susan-knopf-put-those-butts-where-they-belong\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Susan Knopf: Put those butts where they belong"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Friends of the Lower Blue River volunteers Susan Knopf, from left, Lynn Anstutz trash pick up organizer, Jonathan Knopf and Jane Rogers proudly display the roadside trash picked up by a dozen volunteers.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Don\u2019t do it. Please just save my aching back, and don\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n

I bend over again and pick up another one, thankful for my gloves, and my mind wanders. I think of a classic movie scene. Our hero pulls to the side of the road, gets out of his car and lights up. He ponders what Jack Handey of \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d fame would call \u201cdeep thoughts.\u201d Then he stubs out his cigarette, hops in the car and drives off.<\/p>\n

What that magical cinema-graphic moment doesn\u2019t show is me. Me with the orange bag, picking up the trash along Colorado Highway 9 in front of Sierra Bosque. The single most ubiquitous item I retrieved: cigarette butts. I was really pleased. I didn\u2019t find a single fast-food wrapper, just one Starbucks lid, a couple of straws and one broken piece of plastic cutlery. But there must have been hundreds of cigarette butts. My husband, who was cleaning the opposite side of the road, reported the same finding.<\/p>\n

Our cleanup project was a part of a larger countywide effort. We picked up trash with Friends of the Lower Blue River. Sierra Club also was busy scouring the roads and picking up trash.<\/p>\n

Summit County isn\u2019t the only place cigarette butts are turning up. It\u2019s the most frequently collected item in beach cleanups. In 2018, the International Coastal Cleanup<\/a> reported the No. 1 item picked up was cigarette butts, more than 2 million. Cigarette butts make up 25% to 50% of the haul from roadside cleanups.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just put aside the obvious, cigarettes are bad for you and killed my mother and grandmother. Cigarettes tossed from car windows can start fires, and for the past six or seven years, we\u2019ve had pretty acute drought conditions. It was a serious concern contributing to the cancellation of our fireworks. That\u2019s serious!<\/p>\n

Throwing a cigarette out of a moving car can cause a wildfire. Can you just keep that butt to yourself? And that means when you stub it out, you take it with you, like dog owners do with a poopy bag. I really don\u2019t want to walk into a professional building, like I did today, and find butts tossed into the garden.<\/p>\n

Cigarette butts, contrary to wide misapprehension, are not biodegradable<\/a>. The butt of a cigarette, the filter, is made of a type of plasticized cellulose acetate. Scientific studies show<\/a> that it will degrade in most environments but too slowly to be considered biodegradable. And when it does degrade, it releases toxic material into the environment. In other words, a cigarette tossed last September was still on the road, and I had to pick it up this June. What happens to it in between is bad news for the environment and wildlife.<\/p>\n

According an internationally peer-reviewed journal<\/a>, \u201cWhen carelessly discarded by smokers, (butts) are carried from storm sewers and beaches to streams and waterways leading directly to the aquatic environment<\/a>. Infants, as well as many sea creatures, birds and pets are indiscriminate eaters, and ingested plastic trash, including cigarette butts, can choke an animal or poison it with toxins<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

So like I said, keep your butt to yourself, and save my aching back. Better yet, Quit smoking. You\u2019ll save our environment and your life.<\/p>\n

Susan Knopf is a Summit County resident who writes a weekly column for the Summit Daily.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friends of the Lower Blue River volunteers Susan Knopf, from left, Lynn Anstutz trash pick up organizer, Jonathan Knopf and Jane Rogers proudly display the roadside trash picked up by a dozen volunteers.Courtesy photo Don\u2019t do it. Please just save my aching back, and don\u2019t do it. I bend over again and pick up another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 18:28:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}