Cyprus has once again topped the list for the cleanest bathing waters in Europe, and also has a large number of beaches that are holders of the prestigious Blue Flag award.
This is both welcome and wonderful news, and it makes me proud that our coasts are considered so highly outside of the island. But it also makes me wonder just how filthy the rest of the beaches around the world are if ours are so much cleaner in comparison!
For one, the cigarette butts alone would be enough to make me strip the coasts of their high awards and titles if I was the one judging them. My blood boils every time I see my kids make a sandcastle out of cigarette butts stuck together with a bit of sand.
Smokers reading this are going to get on their high horse and get all defensive about how cigarette butts are biodegradable and that they are not a hazard to the environment. Yes, smokers have the right to smoke – even on the beach if they want – although it stinks and spoils the natural ambience, but they don't have the right to leave our children playing in piles of their cigarette remnants.
First of all, it is darn right ugly, and seeing as we all – including the smokers – use these beaches for a large part of the year, don't we care what we are lying or swimming in at all? Furthermore, a lot of young children do pick things up off the sand and put them in their mouth, or as I just mentioned, end up sitting in them and making cigarette sandcastles.
They are also most certainly not environmentally friendly. It is a myth that cigarettes are easily biodegradable. Yes, some have been found to degrade within 1-12 years, but others never decompose at all. If a smoker wants to use the 'biodegradable' argument then I would ask them this: would you like to see paper bags and tissues littered on the beach just because they too are 'biodegradable'? Just because cigarettes are sand coloured it is not okay to camouflage them in the sand.
And what about marine life ingesting cigarette ends? The safety of our sea creatures is already fragile, but if that doesn't sway people, consider this: whatever a fish eats, we eat. That lovely sushi you tuck into most likely has cigarette butts in it, ingested by the fish then by you through the food chain, and that really is 'food for thought'.
Of course, it is not just cigarettes that are spoiling our coasts and smokers are by no means the only perpetrators. I have seen a large and unusual number of items floating in the sea, and whilst that is in no way excusable, I can at least pick them up and throw them away – a task that would be near impossible with all the cigarette butts.
We all have a responsibility to keep our coasts clean, not only for the sake of receiving awards and accolades, but because our health and future as an island is as much entwined with the sea as it is with anything else.
First appeared in The Cyprus Weekly, 21/06/14
