Letter: Virginia needs to do something about cigarette butts

Editor: Cigarettes have been around for many, many years, and many people, when they are finished smoking, drop the butt on the ground.

Some places have tried to regulate the cigarette-butt litter by providing trash bins specifically to throw away a finished cigarette. These, however, have not worked so well for our environment.

Cigarette butts and other microplastics are found everywhere now. In our oceans, on our playground and on our sidewalks. When I go to the beach with my family, it ruins the experience to see hundreds of cigarette butts and other plastics pieces in the sand and in the ocean. A single cigarette butt can take 1 to 5 years to decompose. Other microplastics can take up to 100 years. But Styrofoam and similar materials are the most harmful to our environment – they can take up to 500 years to decompose.

Moving beyond single-use plastics is something that we can do right now. Virginia is able to start making the change to less single-use plastics. This change will benefit our people, land and animals.

I hope that one day I will go to the beach and not see hundreds of microplastic pieces or go to a restaurant and get my takeout food in a Styrofoam container. Virginia must begin to eliminate single-use plastics, to conserve our environment and put wildlife over waste.

Khristen Hamilton, McLean