No. 1 Littered Item in the United States is on Roads and Beaches?

~ Jason Schwartz

…cigarette butts are the No. 1 littered item every year on U.S. roadways and beaches.

Cigarette butt. ‪Norsk (bokmål)‬: Sigarettsneip.

It had to be about 19 years ago that I flicked a cigarette butt to the ground and stepped on it outside of a meeting. My sponsor ran over and picked up and threw it out saying, “What’s wrong with you. Don’t you know that’s littering?”

I didn’t.

I had some weird blindness to the fact that every time I tossed a butt out the car window or onto the ground, I was littering. Littering was outside of my values and I was so obviously littering and was completely blind to it. Not even a twinge of shame.

I knew he was right and I was embarrassed. I never did it again after that day.

Published by Jason Schwartz

I have been an addiction professional and social worker since 1994. I started blogging in 2005 as the Clinical Director at Dawn Farm. I no longer work at Dawn Farm and am now the Director of Behavioral Medicine at a community hospital, and a lecturer at Eastern Michigan University’s School of Social Work. Views expressed here are my own. Keep in mind that the field, the contexts in which the field operates, and my views have changed over time.