An encounter with your cigarette butt… at the seaside?
It takes about 12 years for a cigarette butt to decompose in the environment. In less time, it could travel from CERN to the Mediterranean via the Nant d’Avril and the Rhône. So if you throw a cigarette butt or any other small piece of rubbish down the rainwater drain by the entrance to your building, you might just meet up with it again at the seaside during your next holiday.
It's surprising but true: rainwater drains have no filter system to keep out the small objects like cigarette butts and cable ties which we often find lying around on the ground. At CERN there are two water drainage networks: one for waste water, which is sent to water treatment plants before flowing out into our rivers, and one for rainwater, collected on roofs and car parks, which is not treated and flows directly into waterways.
This picture was taken on the Meyrin site. Take a look under the grid... Photo: André Dziewa.
“When we are carrying out environmental monitoring, we often find cigarettes and other small items of rubbish in the rainwater drains,” says André Dziewa, a member of the Environment Section of the HSE Unit. “This issue is addressed during the training for Territorial Safety Officers (TSO). Sometimes people ask us how to tell the difference between a waste water drain and rainwater drain. The rule is simple: a drain with an open grid is always connected to the pipes for rainwater, which flows directly into the rivers."
Something else which you should know: the same applies to water used for washing cars. We should avoid washing our cars with chemical products other than at designated sites such as car wash stations, as otherwise polluted water ends up in the river.
On its website, the World Health Organization says that around 954,000 tonnes of cigarette filters, which are mostly non-biodegradable, are produced each year by the tobacco industry. Most of these then end up in the street, in waterways or in green spaces. Reason enough for us to find the nearest ashtray!
For more information, see the Swiss campaign « Sous chaque grille coule une rivière » on http://www.aquava.ch/ (in French).
