• STEP ONE: Sign
  • Add your voice to our call for organizations that serve the environment to reject tobacco and vape funding.

• STEP TWO: Get your free truth cleanup kit
  • Join the fight against vape and tobacco waste by hosting a cleanup in your community.

Nearly a million tons of cigarette butts make their way into the environment each year, and vape waste is only making the problem worse. Because e-cigarettes contain toxic chemicals, heavy metals, and residual nicotine, their waste could be an even more serious threat to our water, air, and land.

In short, tobacco and vape trash isn’t just litter, it’s toxic waste. 

What are these industries doing to address the environmental impact of their products? PR. Tobacco and vaping companies use inadequate sustainability goals, meager recycling programs, and even company-sponsored cleanups as ploys to get positive press. 

Creating tons and tons of harmful waste and then putting the burden and local communities to clean up the mess? Hypocrisy at its finest.

Each year, millions of cigarette butts litter our sidewalks, parks, beaches, and other public spaces. Not only are they an eye sore, but they contain harmful chemicals that pose a real threat to the environment.

E-cigarette waste cannot biodegrade even under severe conditions. Cartridges and pods discarded on streets mix with leaf litter and get pushed around by weather events, eventually breaking down into microplastics and chemicals that flow into storm drains to pollute waterways and endanger wildlife.

This is why we’re calling on organizations that serve our communities to reject tobacco and vape funding. We’re empowering people across the nation to take matters into their own hands.

Our goal is to collect 250 pounds of tobacco and vape waste. 

• Cigarette butts are the second most littered item on the globe – more than 750,000 tons of them end up in the environment each year.

• In 2018, Americans generated 2.7 million tons of consumer electronic waste, including e-cigarette waste, that ultimately ends up in landfills or incinerators.

• Cigarette butts contain hazardous substances including arsenic, lead, nicotine and ethyl phenol.

• Some vapes can leak heavy metals and residual nicotine into the environment. 

• It can take at least nine months for a cigarette butt to biodegrade under optimal conditions – but only into smaller pieces of waste which dilute into water and soil.

• E-cigarette waste cannot biodegrade.

• Currently, there’s no standardized way to recycle e-cigarettes in the U.S.