減少垃圾從禁止使用香菸過濾嘴開始
It's time to ban useless cigarette filters to stub out litter
減少垃圾從禁止使用香菸過濾嘴開始
Do the heaps of cigarette butts that litter the ground where smokers gather get on your nerves? Did you know the filter tips on cigarettes are the most common item of litter in the world? The largest part of most cigarette butts is a non-biodegradable plastic filter made of cellulose.
吸菸者扔在地上的那些菸頭會不會讓你感到緊張？你知道嗎，香菸過濾嘴是世界上最常見的垃圾。大多數香菸的過濾嘴都是由纖維素製成的不可生物降解的塑料過濾嘴。
Filters first appeared in the 1950s. The tobacco industry claimed filters made cigarettes safer by absorbing some of the tar that was blamed for the lung cancer epidemic. We now know, says the BMJ, that this safety argument was a myth, one of many created by the tobacco industry to sell cigarettes.
20世紀50年代，香菸過濾嘴首次出現。菸草業聲稱，過濾嘴可以過濾部分焦油（肺癌的主要原因），從而使抽菸變得相對安全。現在我們知道，《英國醫學雜誌》表示，其安全性爭論已成不解之謎，而這也是菸草業爲創造香菸銷量而編造的衆多論據之一。
Filters did reduce tar when cigarettes were tested in smoking machines designed by the industry, but not when smoked by people. Realising this, the industry shifted the focus from trying to find a filter that would reduce toxins to describing cigarettes with misleading terms such as 'light,' 'low tar,' and 'natural'.
當用菸草業設計的吸菸機器抽菸時，的確發現過濾嘴可以減少焦油，但當抽菸對象換成人類時，結果就另當別論了。意識到這一點後，菸草業將人們的關注點從試圖找到一種可以減少毒素的過濾嘴轉變爲用一些誤導性的術語（比如輕、低焦油和純天然）描述香菸。
These terms are now prohibited in many countries, so should we be considering a ban on the filters we now know to be ineffective? The tobacco industry has worked hard to avoid anything that casts cigarettes in a bad light, including distracting attention from the pollution caused by butts.
現在，多個國家已禁止使用這些術語，所以既然我們已經知道過濾嘴效用不大，是否應該考慮禁止使用過濾嘴呢？菸草業一直都在努力避開對香菸不利的情況，包括努力分散大衆的注意力，使其不再關注菸頭造成的污染問題。
"Filters are the deadliest fraud in the history of human civilization," says Robert N Proctor, professor of the history of science at Stanford University. "They are put on cigarettes to save on the cost of tobacco and to fool people. They don't filter at all. In the US, 400,000 people a year die from cigarettes – and those cigarettes almost all have filters."
“香菸過濾嘴是人類文明史上最致命的欺騙，”斯坦福大學科學史教授羅伯特·普羅克特（Robert N Proctor）說道。“使用香菸過濾嘴的初衷是爲了節省菸草成本，欺騙大衆。實際上，它們並不能過濾任何物質。在美國，每年有40萬人因抽菸離世，而這些香菸大多都裝有過濾嘴。”
The EU will ban single-use plastic products, such as cutlery, plates and straws, from 2021. However, this ban doesn't include one of the leading sources of plastic waste that pollutes our public spaces worldwide: the cigarette butt.
歐盟將從2021年起禁止使用一次性塑料產品，例如餐具、盤子和吸管。但該禁令不包括污染全球公共場所的一種主要塑料廢物：菸頭。
It's not clear why filters weren't included in the ban on single-use plastics. However, the tobacco industry mounts large-scale lobbying activities to divert attention from its damaging products.
關於過濾嘴並未上榜（一次性塑料產品禁令）的原因尚不清楚。但是，菸草業開展了大規模的遊說活動，以轉移人們對這一有害產品的注意力。
