Cigarette butts (CBs) are the most common litter found all over the world. The European Union Single Use Plastic (SUP) directive sets Extended Producer Responsibility’s (EPR) obligations for plastic base CBs, not for paper filter CBs. Nevertheless, there is a need to assess the actual environmental impacts of CBs whatever the nature of the filtering material.

The objectives of the study that will be presented were:

• To observe the disintegration and biodegradation capacity of post-consumer paper and cellulose acetate CBs in marine water.
• To gain some preliminary insights on their acute and chronic toxicity on the model freshwater organism, Daphnia magna.
• To monitor the presence of selected harmful and potentially harmful compounds (HPHCs) into water.

Commercial cigarettes with paper and cellulose acetate filters at similar smoke deliveries were smoked according to the ISO smoking regime. CBs were tested for disintegration and biodegradation following an adapted ASTM D6691 standard, and the Daphnia magna acute ecotoxicity tests were done following an adapted OECD 202 standard.

Paper based CBs disintegrate and biodegrade rapidly reaching 81 % disintegration and 76 % biodegradation after 8 weeks, versus 7 % and 27 % for cellulose acetate. Daphnia acute survival rate was higher for the paper-based CBs than the cellulose acetate CBs. After 6 weeks CB incubation, no Daphnia toxicity was observed.

Nicotine, phenol, and benzo(a)pyrene were occasionally detected in water after 48 h, but rapidly became undetectable after one week, suggesting a rapid degradation.

These first results show the importance of sampling and testing standardization to have representative and reproducible results allowing a fact-based comparison of the environmental impact of different CBs.