Take action
Kick the butt of pollution! Eliminate cigarette butts and other tobacco product waste from your community with the help of iKickButts, developed by the Center for Tobacco and the Environment at San Diego State University!
Commercial tobacco products leave a staggering toxic legacy in our outdoor environment. Cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate plastic that soak up toxic chemicals from tobacco smoke. Most cigarettes are simply discarded on sidewalks, streets, parks, and beaches. They contribute dangerous amounts of microplastics and leach large amounts of carcinogens in our rivers, lakes, and oceans.
In San Diego County, with its 3.3 million inhabitants, San Diego State University researchers estimate that 200 million cigarette butts are discarded in the environment every year.
Globally, some 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded in the environment every year.
Lined end-to-end, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts would circle Earth at the equator almost 8 times every day for an entire year.
You can help end the toxic legacy of commercial tobacco products in our environment. Join others in your community and throughout the world to map, classify, and share with community leaders the astonishing scale and impact of commercial tobacco product waste.
With iKickButts, you can take images and count tobacco product waste while mapping where you find the waste in your community.
You can share your images and observations on social media with elected officials, community leaders, and academic researchers.
You can create customized reports including maps of where you found waste and tables of how much and what types of waste you found.
You can use the community science data to advocate for more comprehensive tobacco policies at local, state, national, and global levels.
Join the global effort to map toxic tobacco product waste in your community!