Editor, Gazette-Journal:

2. 13. 6. 14,648. $27.34. These numbers are all involved in my cigarette butt picking-up process, which began just over a year ago. I started because I learned that one cigarette butt contaminates 2 gallons of water. Recently, Mary Ann, who also picks up thousands of butts in Mathews, told me that the filter part takes 13 years to decompose. Then Jack sent me info about recycling cigarette butt filters into plastic products, which noted that they are so toxic that they have to be "watered down" by other recycled plastic to a small part of the final product, which can never come in contact with anything that we eat or drink. Cigarette butts leach their poisons into our groundwater or go down the sewer drains into our waterways. Sadly, a few are always picked up by small children or dogs, and sometimes eaten. Others start brush fires.

I doubt that the folks who throw their cigarette butts on the ground realize these problems, or they wouldn’t toss so ...