Cigarettes Are the Single Most Common Item Found Polluting Beaches and Waterways Worldwide

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – Ocean Conservancy commends the work of the Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors for passing a first-in-the-world measure to ban the sale of all filtered tobacco products in the county by a 5-0 vote. The ban will officially go into effect in January of 2027 as long as two of the four incorporated cities in the county pass similar ordinances. Members of the Santa Cruz County Tobacco Education Coalition are in contact with those cities to do so. Santa Cruz is home to Ocean Conservancy’s California office.

“In addition to the more well-known health impacts of smoking, cigarettes are also a huge environmental menace as they are the number one item found polluting our beaches and waterways worldwide year after year,”said Ocean Conservancy’s director of plastics policy, Dr. Anja Brandon. “Not only are they made of dangerous microplastics, but they also leech chemicals into the environment which harm sensitive marine ecosystems. No butts about it, this landmark ban on cigarette sales will help protect the vital ecosystems and people living in Santa Cruz county alike, and we hope that other counties and cities will follow their lead.”

Dr. Anja Brandon, an environmental engineer who has helped draft landmark state and national legislation regulating plastic pollution in recent years, is available for interviews regarding the significance of smoking bans and the impact it has on ocean plastic pollution.

In early September, Ocean Conservancy submitted a letter in support of the ban to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. Ocean Conservancy was also one of the top advocates for legislation passed in Florida in 2022 which enabled municipalities and counties to ban smoking on beaches and parks in the state. Since that move, over 50 counties and municipalities have enacted smoking bans in Florida.

Since 1986, volunteers with Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup have collected 63 million butts worldwide; 35 million in the United States, with 8.5 million collected in the state of California alone. From 2013-2023, Ocean Conservancy’s local partner Save Our Shores collected over 400,000 cigarette butts from the beaches, open spaces, and public areas in the Santa Cruz region.

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