Quote Originally Posted by denver24 View Post
I've always wondered, how long does it take a cigar butt to break down in soil or compost?
I'm no pro gardener, but I've been doing the compost thing for a while for our garden at home, and have read quite a bit on composting.

It depends. First, on where you live. It's hot here, so stuff breaks down pretty quick. I guess it would also depend on whether you were breaking up your butts, or just throwing the butts in there. If you were breaking them up, then naturally, you could expect it to compost quicker. I would say if you had a compost maker, you should have compost from a cigar butt in a few weeks. If you have a big pile in a container like I do, you have a few months. But chances are, you will probably have other things in there as well; compost breaks down significantly to about half of what you started with. Even if you had 50 broken up cigar butts in there, it's not going to do much. Besides, the compost (to be effective, general, overall compost) will need more ingredients than just tobacco leaves to contribute - get some food scraps and grass clippings in there as well.

I think I'll stop there, as I'm worried I'll get too far off topic.