Check out this timelapse video of a cigarette left in soil for a whole year and see what happens to it.
Photo Owl Time Lapse, who is a photographer, left three cigarettes in a mason jar filled with soil for a whole year, He took a timelapse video of the cigarettes to show what happens to them. After recording the timelapse for the entire year he posted the video to YouTube on July 15. The video has now received millions of views.
“You guys really liked my in-soil timelapses, so I decided to do another one,” writes the photographer. “This time I put the cigarettes in a mason jar full of soil and left it in there for a whole year. Underground timelapse.”
The video depicts the video falling apart in the soil and after 20 days they start disappearing from view and by the 100th day the tobacco seems to gave completely disappeared and the paper and filter have completely separated. Green moss has taken over the mason jar by day 200 and by day 300 only the filters remain.
This also goes on to show that cigarette filters do not biodegrade easily and are a huge source of soil pollution. Cigarette butts are the most littered anthropogenic (man-made) waste item in the world. The plastic cellulose acetate in cigarette butts biodegrades gradually, passing through the stage of microplastics and the breakdown of discarded cigarette butts is highly dependent upon environmental conditions. Some break down quickly, while in other cases a longer time period is required.
Video and image credit: Photo Owl Time Lapse.
Saima Baig
I am a Chartered Environmentalist from the Royal Society for the Environment, UK and co-owner of DoLocal Digital Marketing Agency Ltd, with a Master of Environmental Management from Yale University, an MBA in Finance, and a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics. I am passionate about science, history and environment and love to create content on these topics.
