Recently, I got curious about how many cigarette butts an individual smoker throws out the window. Like many things, we probably think just a few here and there doesn’t add up. The mentality of “I’m just one person and what I’m doing isn’t much” can easily take over with anything. I decided to look up some information on this to find out how many cigarette buts actually get tossed out the car window.
According to some statistics, the average smoker smokes about 20 cigarettes per day, which is one pack. That seems about right, from what I’ve seen. However, some statistics showed that it was less. So I decided to use 15 cigarettes per day as the average. So in a year that comes to 5,475 cigarette butts produced by one person. Obviously, those aren’t all smoked while driving a car. The average person spends around 101 minutes a day driving. So here is a break down of these numbers.
AVERAGE STATISTICS FOR ONE PERSON
- Cigarettes Smoked: 15 per day (5,478.75 per year)
- Cigarettes Smoked While Driving: 2.1042 per day* (768.56 per year)
- For visualization, here is a photo of 700 cigarette butts on a grocery bag.
- Weight of Cigarette Butt: 0.12 oz
- Total Weight of Cigarette Butts While Driving: 5.7642 lbs (92.2272 ounces)
- This doesn’t even factor in the number of cigarettes tossed to the ground while walking, taking a smoke break or anything else. This is only from driving.
* Since we must sleep and there are not opportunities to smoke at every moment someone is awake, I factored in a 12 hour (720 minutes) period each day when a person would be able to smoke.
We all enjoy the beauty of this area, even you. This is why so many people visit here and move here. So next time you’re out driving, a passenger in a car, hiking, ice fishing, or whatever. Don’t throw your cigarette out the window. Dispose of it correctly. There are even FREE ash trays that you can keep in your car for this. You will be helping yourself and many others like you to be able to continue enjoying the area in good conditions.