Vancouver smokers are being urged to properly dispose of cigarette butts in the midst of B.C.’s worst wildfire season on record, with tossed butts responsible for more than 70 fires a year in the city alone.
Cigarettes are the number-one most littered item of all littered items tracked by the City of Vancouver, according to Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung.
“It’s really frustrating,” she said of smokers tossing them on the ground.
There are 68 such bins in downtown Vancouver and more than 30,000 pocket ashtrays have been distributed in the city since 2019, according to the municipality.
In the first six months of 2023, however, just four fines for littering were handed out in Vancouver, compared to 13 in all of 2022. The city doesn’t track which ones were for tossing butts.
“The city’s focus is really on education over enforcement because what we want to do is try to encourage people to either carry a cigarette pouch or discard of those cigarettes responsibly,” Kirby-Yung told Global News.
This year, the municipality said 79 warnings have been given for smoking on beaches, compared to 60 in all of 2022. Fines for discarding cigarettes on the ground range from $250 to $10,000.
According to Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services, discarded smoking materials are the top cause of fires in the city. Last month, it reminded residents via Twitter that tossing butts out of car windows, into planters, down garbage chutes or in garbage cans is not a safe way to dispose of them.
Capt. Matthew Trudeau, public information officer for the service, reminded the public Wednesday that multiple fire bans are in effect right now as well as the province experiences widespread drought.
“We did have a fire, a second-alarm fire this week where someone did discard there cigarette butt into a planter … causing a significant balcony fire,” he said. “Even a small ignition source, that cigarette butt smouldering, in essence can cause a significant fire given our dry conditions.
“I hope it’s just people not knowing or maybe just in their routine and not realizing what they’re doing,” Trudeau added, of people continuing to toss butts out improperly daily.
Last month, North Vancouver firefighters released a startling video of a massive fire erupting from a cigarette discarded in a local backyard, more than six hours after it was left there.
The month before, the City of Port Coquitlam temporarily doubled fines for those caught taking a drag in parks or littering their cigarette butts, amid increased fire risk.
Concerned about fires in Stanley Park, this week, the City of Vancouver also reminded residents that smoking in any park or beach — regardless of whether a butt is discarded — is against the bylaw.
Meanwhile, the University of British Columbia’s Juan José Alava, has a different concern about tossed butts: ocean pollution. The marine eco-toxicologist, who works at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, said more than 7,000 chemical compounds make up a cigarette and the butts take about 30 years to break down.
“While they are in the environment they can really be impacting microorganisms or invertebrate fish and even frogs,” he explained. “No wonder — because they are microplastic they can accumulate also in some food webs.”
Alava said some 6 trillion cigarettes have been discarded around the world to date.
Editor’s Note: This story was corrected to reflect an updated number of fines issued for littering in 2022.