Lighters And Beach Trash

The first disposable lighters were made in 1961 by a company called Cricket. The first Cricket lighter was produced in a place called Annecy located in France. Then Bic came along and started producing disposable lighters in 1973. What that means, more trash and that trash lands up on the beach.

Aside from disposable lighters there are disposable utility lighters, matches and lighter fluids, that is a lot of toxic waste left on the beach. I pick up almost every day a ‘fire’ related item on the beach during the summer.

Here is the kicker, most people do not need to take a lighter to the beach. There is no smoking or vaping on the beach. In the summer there are firepits, but every fire pit has a trash can. Why would you leave anything behind?

It is not just lighters, it is the trash that surrounds those lighters, vaping, cigarettes, cigars and their packaging. Food and  drinks. These are all just ground into the sand, washed away, picked up by the trash trucks and end up in our land fills.

• 30+ billion lighters have been sold globally by BIC since they began manufacturing them in 1973
• 1.8 billion BIC products in 2016. were manufactured, assembled and/or packaged by US workers.
• One billion cigarette lighters sold in the US annually.
• 700 million lighters are imported each year, with about 400 million coming from China.
• 500,000,000 Zippo lighters have been produced since 1933
• 1997 to 2002, the CPSC estimated that more than 3000 people went to hospital emergency rooms for injuries resulting from malfunctioning lighters.
• 1987: About 12 children die every month from playing with cigarette lighters but the nation’s safety agency. pre-safety standards.
• 1987: 3,000 people are treated in hospital emergency rooms each year as a result of fires associated with the lighters,
• Children playing with fire set more than 20,000 fires every year. That is an average of almost 400 fires each week. (Nationwide Childrens)
• Fires started by children playing cause an average of 150 deaths and nearly 1,000 injuries every year.

We have probably all seen the images of seagulls with lighters in their stomaches.

Lighters are difficult to recycle as they are made of several different metals and plastics which are difficult to separate for recycling. Kids can pick these up. They are dangerous to both humans and animals.

Moral of the story, don’t take to the beach or anyplace anything you don’t need. Pack it in and Pack it out.