Welcome to Plastic-Free July. As the northern hemisphere heads to the beach or the mountains for well-deserved R&R, Plastic-Free July is a reminder that the plastic pollution crisis is only getting worse and we have it in our power to make small decisions that, multiplied by many millions, can have a positive impact on mitigating this looming disaster and raising awareness.

There is a false impression that refusing straws and packing reuseable shopping bags will fix the plastic problem. It won’t. The solution must come upstream at the manufacturing level, and that requires the political will of governments. But we should not ignore the small but important power we each possess to make a statement through our actions.

Discarded plastics, especially single-use plastics, are rapidly filling our landfills, our oceans and our own bodies. The number one source of plastic pollution and of microplastics? Cigarette butts. An estimated 4.5 trillion butts are discarded into the environment every year, and they do not biodegrade. Each butt has thousands of tiny strands of plastic small enough to enter the food chain.

While cigarette butts are number one, vaping products are catching up rapidly. Most are single-use, and carry the added burden of built-in batteries, which bring their own environmental risk.

Tobacco/nicotine products are a particularly insidious source of plastic because they are attached to the number cause of preventable death in the world. Most other plastics at least serve some purpose (but we still need to look for solutions there too). If governments are serious about addressing plastic pollution, they should start with cigarette filters and vapes. If, as a global community, we can’t do this, what plastic are we willing to do without?