The average distance New Zealanders are prepared to walk to a bin to dispose of their rubbish is 8.4 meters; so littering rises dramatically beyond this distance, according to a story by Stuart Mitchell for Ethical Marketing News citing the results of research commissioned by Keep New Zealand Beautiful (KNZB).
Forty four percent of those surveyed littered within five meters of their nearest bin.
But the research revealed that ninety three percent of people think it is important for New Zealand to maintain its clean, green image.
KNZB recently launched an anti-litter campaign after its volunteers, during one week-long clean-up, collected enough rubbish to cover 120 rugby fields up to half a meter in depth.
The KNZB research showed the top items littered in public places by New Zealanders were cigarette butts, which comprised 78 percent of litter, followed by takeaway packaging, which comprised five percent. It was not stated on which basis the litter was measured – whether by number of pieces, volume or weight.
KNZB CEO Heather Saunderson was quoted as saying that the next stage of the campaign would involve its partnering with Stats NZ, the Ministry for the Environment and the Department of Conservation, to launch a Tier 1 National Litter Audit that would physically inspect litter in areas such as motorways, rest stops, residential streets, beaches, rural and industrial locations.
Category: Filters
Pitching up for litter
Butts into compost
The South Korean city of Guri has developed a machine that transforms cigarette butts into compost, according to a story in The Korea Bizwire.
The technology is being tested in the grounds of government offices, where the machine is housed inside a smoking booth.
According to the story, the process uses microorganisms harmless to humans to create usable compost out of the butts – compost that has the added advantage of repelling pests.
The authorities in Guri have indicated they will place cigarette-butt composting-machines around the city after they have concluded the initial trial and conducted an overview of the results.Road to recycling
Australian researchers may have come up with a way of utilising discarded cigarette butts, according to a story by Ben Renner for studyfinds. org.
Researchers at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) university have tested a mixture of asphalt and discarded cigarette butts, and the results so far are said to have been encouraging.
“I have been trying for many years to find sustainable and practical methods for solving the problem of cigarette butt pollution,” Dr. Abbas Mohajerani, the leader of the study and senior lecturer at RMIT, said in a release.
Mohajerani earned worldwide praise in 2016 after discovering a way to use cigarette butts in the production of bricks.
The researchers found that not only does the asphalt pass heavy traffic tests, it also reduces thermal conductivity.
The results of Mohajerani’s study were published in the journal Construction and Building Materials.
The studyfinds.org story is at: https://www.studyfinds.org/cigarette-butts-recycled-ground-asphalt/.Evidence is full of holes
Scientists from multiple institutions are gathering evidence to assist the US Food and Drug Administration in making a decision about whether to recommend design changes to filtered cigarettes, according to a Virginia Tech story published on medicalxpress.com.
The scientists, who include a group of addiction neuroscience researchers from the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute (VTCRI), are being funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute.
Warren Bickel, the Virginia Tech Carilion behavioral health research professor and director of the VTCRI Addiction Recovery Research Center, along with VTCRI co-investigators and research assistant professors Mikhail Koffarnus and Jeff Stein, are said to be spearheading one of three integrated projects involving teams of multidisciplinary investigators who are charged with determining whether ventilated filters on cigarettes have been a boon or bane to public health.
VTCRI scientists will focus on how ventilated filters on cigarettes, product packaging and messaging have affected cigarette use, and how alternative nicotine delivery systems – such as electronic cigarettes – can be used to modify smoking behavior.
“My piece of the puzzle is to understand the role of filter ventilation on the likability and addictive potential of cigarettes,” said Bickel, who is also a professor in the Department of Psychology in Virginia Tech’s College of Science. “We are going to see how smokers respond to the same tobacco product, with and without filter ventilation. We want to understand the impact of the ventilated and unventilated products on how likely people will want to smoke. We also want to determine if filter ventilation reinforces smoking activity and thereby increases the likelihood of addiction.”
When they were introduced in the 1960s, ‘light cigarettes,’ which had tiny ventilation holes in the filters, were thought to be a safer, cleaner way to smoke because they purportedly lowered the amounts of tar and nicotine exposure.
However, a 2014 Surgeon General’s Report named ventilation in cigarette filters as a potential contributor to lung cancer.
And in 2017, an influential study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute recommended that the FDA consider regulating filter ventilation.
The story is at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-03-scientists-unfiltered-truth-cigarettes.html.‘Filtergate’ question raised
Thirty-seven members of the European Parliament have expressed concern about what they describe as the ‘Filtergate scandal’; and they are seeking assurances from the Commission about compliance with the Tobacco Products Directive.
In a preamble to their question, the MEPs said that Articles 3, 4 and 5 of Directive 2014/40/EU concerning the manufacture, presentation and sale of tobacco and related products had specified maximum emission levels for tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide in tobacco products, the measurement methods to be used for determining those levels, and requirements concerning the reporting of ingredients and emissions.
‘More specifically, Article 3 stipulates that the emission levels from cigarettes placed on the market or manufactured in the member states may not be greater than 10 mg of tar, 1 mg of nicotine and 10 mg of carbon monoxide per cigarette.
‘Article 4 stipulates that tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide emissions from cigarettes must be verified by laboratories which are approved and monitored by the competent authorities of the member states.
‘Article 5 stipulates that member states must require manufacturers and importers of tobacco products to submit to their competent authorities information concerning ingredients and quantities thereof and the emission levels referred to in Article 3.
‘All these requirements had already been in force since the adoption of Directive 2001/37/EC.’
The MEPs asked whether, following the submission by the National Anti-Smoking Committee to the State Prosecutor in France of a complaint against the French subsidiaries of four cigarette manufacturers (British American Tobacco, Philip Morris, Japan Tobacco and Imperial Brand) citing “deliberate endangerment of persons unknown”, a complaint that was based on the allegation that the manufacturers in question placed on the market cigarettes whose filters had been manipulated, with the result that their actual emission levels for tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide were significantly higher than those officially verified, ‘can the Commission give assurances that all the provisions of Directive 2014/40/EU, and in particular those referred to above, are being enforced in all the member states and complied with by cigarette manufacturers?’
The Commission is due to reply in writing.Taxing questions in Kenya
The current system for taxing cigarettes in Kenya should be replaced with a simplified one where all types of cigarettes are taxed equally, according to a story in The Star.
Currently, filtered cigarettes are taxed at Sh1.80 per piece while those without filters are taxed at Sh2.50 per piece.
The International Institute for Legislative Affairs (IILA), which is described as a Nairobi-based legal think tank, said the system had created many loopholes and that the government was ‘losing Sh7 billion every year in potential taxes’.
The IILA has proposed the introduction of a flat rate of Sh3.25 per piece regardless of whether it is filtered or not.
In fact, the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) adopted a flat taxation system in 2015, taxing cigarettes at Sh2.50 per piece regardless of type.
“This move led to a drop of 17 percent in consumption of cigarettes and an increase of revenue of appropriately Sh7 billion from Sh8.23 billion to Sh15.56 billion,” Emma Wanyonyi, the IILA chief executive, said in Nairobi yesterday.
But manufacturers had lobbied against the flat rate and the Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich ordered the KRA to revert to the tiered system last year.
The IILA submitted its recommendations to the treasury, which received 2018-19 tax proposals from key public and private sector players yesterday.
BAT Kenya said it opposed increased taxes on the grounds that cigarettes would become ‘too expensive for ordinary people’.
“We would encourage the government to have a much more stable tax environment so that their revenues can be more predictable and we can have a more predictable operating environment,” BAT Kenya managing director Beverly Spencer-Obatoyinbo said.Voting with their butts
A borough council in Northern Ireland is trialing ‘ballot bins’ in an effort to reduce cigarette litter across the borough, according to a story by Duncan Elder for the Portadown Times.
Ballot bins, which have been used in other places in a number of guises, are customizable ashtray bins that encourage people to use them by providing smokers with the opportunity to vote on various issues.
The bins display questions about, say, favourite films or music, and users can vote for their preferred answer by putting their butts into one of the two containers.
A window in the bins displays which choice is winning.
The bins, part of Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council’s Clean Neighbourhoods Action Plan, are designed to encourage people to put their cigarette butts in a bin rather than stubbing them out on the pavement.
Three such bins are being trialed within the town centres of Armagh, Banbridge and Lurgan in an effort to counter what is described in the story as the scourge of cigarette butts littering pavements.
The installation of more bins in targeted areas across the borough is planned for the New Year.
In the past the council has tried various measures aimed at reducing cigarette litter, including the imposition of big fines.
Can cigarette butts take off?
Chemists at the UK’s University of Nottingham have discovered that carbons derived from cigarette butts have ultra-high surface areas and unprecedented hydrogen storage capacity, which could solve a major waste disposal problem while offering a way to store clean fuel, according to a story on physorg.com relayed by the TMA.
Robert Mokaya, professor of materials chemistry, and Troy Scott Blankenship, an undergraduate project student, published their work in the academic journal Energy and Environmental Science.
“We have utilised cigarette butt waste as starting material to prepare energy materials that offer unprecedented hydrogen storage properties,” said Mokaya.
“This may not only address an intractable environmental pollution problem – cigarette butts – but also offers new insights into converting a major waste product into very attractive hydrogen storage materials.”
Using hydrogen as a fuel is appealing because the only by-product when combined with oxygen is water.
Mokaya said that this technique could be developed to replace, for example, gasoline as a transport fuel or natural gas as a heating fuel.
Spotlight on acetate JV
The European Commission has opened an ‘in-depth investigation to assess the proposed creation of an acetate flake and acetate tow joint venture by Celanese and Blackstone under the EU Merger Regulation’.
In a press note issued on Tuesday, the Commission said that it had concerns that the transaction might reduce competition in the acetate tow market.
‘The proposed joint venture would combine the acetate flake and tow activities of Celanese with Blackstone’s recently acquired portfolio company Acetow, which is active in the same areas,’ the Commission said…
‘The Commission has preliminary concerns that the proposed transaction could reduce competition in the acetate tow market. Celanese and Blackstone’s Acetow are, respectively, the second and third largest manufacturers of acetate tow at global level excluding China. The merged entity would become the new market leader with the risk of significantly reducing competition in the industry.
‘After its initial investigation, the Commission considers that Eastman and Daicel, the only two remaining major competitors, would not exert sufficient competitive pressure on the merged entity.
‘Moreover, the industry is characterised by high barriers to entry.
‘Finally, the Commission has preliminary concerns that the proposed transaction would make tacit co-ordination between tow suppliers more likely.’
The transaction was notified to the Commission on September 12.
The Commission now has 90 working days, until March 5, to make a decision.
The Commission said that the opening of an in-depth inquiry did not prejudge the result of the investigation.
Warning on filters
Filter cigarettes should be recalled from sale in Australia and the tobacco industry forced to pay local government and water authorities for cleaning up the toxic waste caused by discarded butts, according to a story in The Conversation.
Australians should not be misled about the existence of a ‘safer’ cigarette, the story said. There wasn’t one.
But without filters, the number of lethal lung cancers might be reduced, more smokers would quit because of the harsh taste of unfiltered smoke, and fewer young people would start smoking.
The story also attacked the use of ventilation holes in filters, which were said to be present on 90 percent of the licit cigarettes sold in Australia.
Larger modern filters with tiny holes introduced more air into each puff, making the smoke inhaled feel easier on the throat, the story said.
But to extract a constant nicotine dose, smokers compensated by taking deeper puffs, and more of them.
This decreased smokers’ exposure to just a few carcinogens, but increased their exposure to more harmful smoke components in the vapor phase of the smoke.
This change in smoking behavior had caused a major upsurge during the past 30 years or so in adenocarcinomas. On the other hand, central squamous cell cancers, cancers of larger lung tissue, had reduced in parallel, but this had had no effect on cancer numbers overall.
A review of evidence on filters and cancer had found filter ventilation had contributed to the rise in lethal adenocarcinomas, and recommended filter ventilation be banned.
The full story is at: https://theconversation.com/filters-a-cigarette-engineering-hoax-that-harms-both-smokers-and-the-environment-85393.
