On average, around a hundred cigarette butts litter the floor of Swiss gaming sites, according to a survey by the Stop2drop organization. Toxic for the environment, they also represent a danger for children.
In September, Stop2drop analyzed the soil of 170 playing spaces in 22 cantons, including all the French-speaking cantons. Its volunteers found cigarette butts on 98.5% of them, the organization said in a press release on Tuesday. One of them had 686 cigarette butts, which illustrates the urgency of action, she adds.
On average, 91 cigarette butts littered the ground of each playground in Switzerland, compared to 77 during a first analysis carried out in 2022.
“Smoking on playgrounds must be a thing of the past,” underlines the director of the organization, Markus Dick, recalling that children “learn by imitating”: if they see adults smoking on playgrounds, they are more likely to repeat this behavior in the future.
A cigarette butt is “extremely dangerous” for young children, warns stop2drop: if they ingest it, they risk poisoning. In addition, the filter is made of “quasi-indegradable” plastic and contains more than 7,000 chemicals that pollute soil and drinking water through rain. Toxic substances from a single cigarette butt can contaminate up to 1000 liters of water.
This article was automatically published. Source: ats
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