Cigarette butts are the most littered item on the planet; inundating the world with microplastic pollution, leaching harmful chemicals and heavy metals. The tobacco industry created these inconsumable cigarette components - deceptively naming them “filters’ - in response to the growing public awareness of the deadly harms of cigarette smoking. The deception helped flood the market with these products, and, in turn, has created serious environmental harm and significant costs to clean up.
Santa Cruz County, the City of Santa Cruz, and the City of Capitola are the first jurisdictions in the country to take an upstream approach to dealing with the problem of cigarette butt waste. All three jurisdictions adopted local laws banning the sale of partially inconsumable cigarettes (i.e. those marketed as “filtered” cigarettes), illustrating how upstream policies can be used to tackle commercial tobacco product waste.
The Public Health Law Center will host a two-part webinar series to showcase this first-of-its-kind policy, the environmental impetus behind it, the logistical process, public engagement, and data-collection efforts undertaken to achieve it.
Part 1 will feature Tara Leonard of the Santa Cruz County Department of Public Health who will join us to discuss the ordinance. Tara will go over the process of getting the policy enacted, including gauging and harnessing community buy-in, educating decision-makers, and other efforts that lead to supporting resolutions and the ultimate adoption of the policy by the three jurisdictions. PHLC staff attorney Carolina Saavedra will join Tara to highlight the language of the ordinance and the significance of the selected terminology in assisting the aims of the policy.
Part 2 will also feature academic researchers who will share their expertise on the environmental harms and economic costs of this litter, how the supporting data that was collected, how public works regulations (i.e. storm water regulations, Trash amendments) can serve as an incentive for this type of policy. Dr. Thomas Novotny is the founder of the Cigarette Butt Pollution Project and a member of the Policy Research Center for Tobacco and the Environment. Dr. John Atkinson’s expertise focuses on microplastics pollution research—with an ongoing project looking into the release rates of cigarette butt microfibers and its implications on the built environment.
Part 1: February 5, 2026, 11 – 12:15 PT
Presenters:
Tara Leonard, Project Director for the Tobacco Education and Prevention Program of the Santa Cruz County Department of Public Health
Carolina Saavedra, Senior Staff Attorney at Public Health Law Center
Part 2: February 10, 2026, 11 – 12:15 PT
Presenters:
Dr. Thomas Novotny, Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at San Diego State University (SDSU) School of Public Health
Dr. John Atkinson, Environmental Engineering Professor at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Buffalo