Archive of Vibrant Matter | disposable cigarette lighters

Basic Data

Description: For millennia matches made of wood with a tip of combustable phosphorus was the common way to light a cigarette, until the introduction of disposable gas-filled lighters. Once used these lighters are just thrown away. These seven lighters, five from the French company BIC, were found at Praia dos Inglêses, Foz, Porto, Portugal while taking a short 15 minute walk around this popular urban beach near the mouth of the river Douro. How many billions of these discarded lighters exist on other beaches worldwide? What is the balance of responsibility between the consumer and the companies who manufacture these lighters to ensure that the materials can be recycled? Do we need to legislate against disposable lighters in favour of refillable ones? Or, are their other solutions that respect the concept of the circular economy?
Submitted by: Alastair Fuad-luke
Typology: Artefact
Origin, Location and Movement?: Immigrant (arriving in a location from another; imported)
Address: Praia dos Inglêses, Foz, Porto, Portugal
Item Relation: Several Things
State of abundance: Common
How was the item encountered or obtained?: Found

Socio-cultural Data

Present Uses

Personal lighters for cigarettes, cigars and other tasks that replaced refillable lighters and matches from the early 1970s onwards. The first mass market disposable lighter was manufactured by the French company BIC in 1973, https://sharrowmills.com/pages/the-story-of-the-everyday-lighter

Technical Data

Class of Material

Polymers

Bio-temporal-geographical Data

Residence time (How long does the matter/material/artefact stay in an unaltered state in the location/context/system before it decay?)

Centuries

How does the item affect the environment in which it exists?

Harm it

Ontological-cosmological Data

wasteful

How would you like to be with this artefact/material/living thing/matter?

I prefer wooden matches.

What can humans give back to this artefact/material/living thing/matter?

Humans can take responsibility for gathering the disposed lighters in our environment then returning them to a recycling centre so that the materials - plastics and metals - might enter a "second life". However, it is probably better that we return to buying a "lifelong" lighter that we refill with gas when it becomes empty i.e. return to pre-1970s behaviour!

# 0063

disposable cigarette lighters

Artefact, Several Things, Common, Found, Polymers, Centuries