About 10 years ago I went to a local music festival that was taking place in a local park. It was one of those 80s nostalgia things with lots of ‘B level’ music acts wheeled out for the sentimental carousel of a bunch of Gen X’ers.
As we entered the event, we were handed a thickly padded plastic pocket together with a coloured flyer.
The flyer explained that the post-it note sized pocket was to be used for the disposal of cigarette butts. This item was branded with the logo of the local council – who managed the park – and it was the council who had supplied these environmental butt pockets.
The flyer also explained all the harmful effects of leaving cigarette butts on the (grassy) ground. I remember something about nitrates and harm to animals.
Some further context: the pouches were handed to each and every attendee, not just to smokers. Furthermore, the park was not used to graze animals so I was unable to determine how the harmful effects of cigarette butts were going to become manifest.
Thus, the benefits were not very clear.
What staggered me at the time was that these items were presented as vital components of responsible environmentalism. The council was clearly very proud of its role in pointing out and reducing the harmful effects of ciggie butts.
Yet the pouches also had a not-insignificant negative environmental impact. Not only had the manufacture of these items used resources – and released CO2 – but they were going to end up in landfill – or hedgerows – in the very near future.
I dreaded to think how long these thickly padded items of tough plastic would take to breakdown. Decades, at least, all the while releasing micro-plastic particles into whatever vicinity they ended up in.
I wondered how the scales of Green environmentalism would balance out. Would the environmental benefits of these pockets exceed the environmental harms? How many captured cigarette butts would make the whole enterprise a net boon to the planet?
Whilst mulling over these questions, it dawned on me that the Council was very unlikely to have assessed these questions itself. The council would only have noted the benefits and ignored the costs. Even the benefits would not have been quantified. And that’s often the issue with environmentalists, if it’s something they want to do, they measure the benefits and ignore the costs. EVs and Renewable energy are examples of this phenomenon. However, if they are ideologically against sonething, then they only weigh up the costs.
In summary, someone at the council had the idea for ciggie butt envelopes and everyone at the meeting thought it would be a superb idea because not only would it be good for the land and the animals but it would show everyone how responsible the council is with regard to the environment.
Atticus Fox 