Litter

Cigarette butts and packaging are a major litter issue, with clean-up operations routinely finding large proportions of litter to be tobacco related (butts, packages etc).  In addition, discarded cigarette butts contain toxic chemicals such as cadmium, lead and zinc which leach into the soil and waterways when the butts break down.  Promoting smokefree outdoor areas such as parks, playgrounds etc is an important way of keeping public areas clean and tidy and litter-free.

Cigarette Butt Pollution Project (California, USA)

The Cigarette Butt Pollution Project is funded by the California Tobacco Related Disease Research Project of the University of California.  Its goal is to examine all the policy options available to eradicate cigarette butt waste from the environment and to advocate for adoption of such policies at the national, state, and local levels.  Affiliates of the project also conduct scientific research on the toxicity of butts, the economics of butt cleanup, and the efforts of the tobacco industry to avoid responsibility for cigarette butt pollution.  The Cigarette Butt Advisory Group (CBAG) advises the project, now based at San Diego State University's Graduate School of Public Health.

• Cigarette Butt Pollution Project website
• Cigarette Butt Advisory Group

Tobacco Industry CSR
Tobacco companies try to promote the solution to tobacco litter as being about educating smokers to be more 'responsible.' However there is no evidence that this approach has been effective, whereas smokefree policies as introduced in New Zealand and other jurisdictions have shown reductions in tobacco litter.

• Evaluation of the Opotiki smokefree outdoor areas policy found that the number of cigarette butts littered was reduced by nearly two-thirds as a result of the policy.
• "All anti-litter campaigns openly embrace three broad strategies: reducing use, recycling and education to "do the right thing". Serious anti-litter organisations campaign to reducing packaging such as plastic bags, lobby for bottle deposit legislation and tougher fines for littering. The Butt Littering Trust deliberately limits itself to education. Imagine how seriously the community would regard a plastic bag manufacturer setting up a Trust to educate shoppers not to discard bags, while lobbying hard to oppose  any reduction in bag use." See: BAT should butt out of smoking reforms, Canberra Times, 18 May 2006.
• "Trying to persuade smokers to be more considerate, and law enforcement of anti-littering provisions, are two important components of butt reduction efforts. But they are minor, band-aid contributors to the problem at large. BAT has a naked conflict of interest in addressing the litter question. The Butt Littering Trust directors are either willing or naively unwitting allies in this sham. Tobacco control advocates in Australia are now working with some success with local government authorities to alert them to the broader agenda of tobacco industry sponsored anti-litter campaigns."  See: Chapman, S., 'Butt clean up campaigns: wolves in sheep’s clothing?', Tobacco Control 2006;15:273
• Tobacco companies have used "responsible disposal" strategies as part of a lobbying strategy against councils extending smokefree areas.  ASH Australia have written to Wagga Wagga (NSW) Councillors answering misleading arguments of British American Tobacco Australasia. BATA has tried to derail a smokefree al fresco dining move by wrongly claiming that such policies hurt business and are opposed by tobacco control experts, and that BAT's Butt Littering Trust offers "evidence-based" alternatives. See: Tobacco company misleads Local Government to derail smokefree dining areas and ASH media release 27/11/08
• A 2005/6 report by the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation concludes that, "Cigarette manufacturers have largely limited their product stewardship activities to funding community education. They appear to consider that such funding fulfils their product stewardship obligations. However, the activities and projects funded have not translated into widespread reduction of cigarette butt litter. The impact of current activities funded by cigarette manufacturers has not delivered a reduction in butt littering.” See: NSW Extended Producer Responsibilty, Priority Statement 2005/6, Department of Environment and Conservation, New South Wales
• 'Tobacco in Australia' has two relevent sections to this issue:
• The environmental impact of tobacco use
• The tobacco industry's response to tobacco litter
• In New Zealand, BAT funded an award at the Packaging Council’s ‘environmental awards’ in 2007 as part of their increasing use of littering as a CSR strategy. See: BAT sponsored an award at the Packaging Council’s ‘environmental awards’ announced in August 2007. 
• "Keep America Beautiful's ineffective policies on cigarette litter have advanced the interests of their tobacco industry donors at the expense of the public interest. Internal tobacco industry documents show a highly coordinated effort by the industry and Keep America Beautiful to keep cigarette litter out of the public consciousness. As a result, cigarette butts remain the most ubiquitous form of litter in the nation and the world, as smokers remain largely uneducated about the detrimental effects of their actions." See: Keep America Beautiful: Grassroots Non-Profit or Tobacco Front Group?, PR Watch, Third Quarter 2001, Volume 8, No. 3

Other useful documents

• "Discarded cigarette filters are a form of non-biodegradable litter. Carried as runoff from streets to drains, to rivers, and ultimately to the ocean and its beaches, cigarette filters are the single most collected item each year in international beach cleanups. They are an environmental blight on streets, sidewalks, and other open areas. Rather than being a protective health device, cigarette filters are primarily a marketing tool to help sell ‘safe’ cigarettes. They are perceived by much of the public (especially current smokers) to reduce the health risks of smoking through technology. Filters have reduced the machine-measured yield of tar and nicotine from burning cigarettes, but there is controversy as to whether this has reduced the disease burden of smoking to the population. Filters actually may serve to sustain smoking by making it seem less urgent for smokers to quit and easier for children to initiate smoking because of reduced irritation from early experimentation. Several options are available to reduce the environmental impact of cigarette butt litter, including developing biodegradable filters, increasing fines and penalties for littering filters, monetary deposits on filters, increasing availability of butt receptacles, and expanded public education. It may even be possible to ban the sale of filtered cigarettes altogether on the basis of their adverse environmental impact. This option may be especially attractive in coastal states where beaches accumulate butt waste and where smoking indoors is increasingly prohibited. Additional research is needed on the various policy options, including behavioral research on the impact of banning the sale of filtered cigarettes altogether." See: Thomas E. Novotny, 'Filtered Cigarettes and the Case for an Environmental Policy on Cigarette Waste', Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009.
• The growing, processing and smoking of tobacco have major negative impacts on our local and global environments. See: Smoking and the Environment, Cancer Control Council website.
• Tobacco and the environment, factsheet no:22, Action on Smoking and Health – July 2004
• "For the past eight years (1990-1997), cigarette butts have been the leading item found during the International Coastal Cleanup Project; they accounted for 19.1% of all items collected in 1997. The tobacco manufacturing process produces liquid, solid, and airborne waste. Among those wastes, some materials, including nicotine, are designated by the EPA as Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) chemicals. These are possible environmental health hazards." See:  Thomas E Novotnya, Feng Zhaob, Consumption and production waste: another externality of tobacco use', Tob Control 1999;8:75-80 (Spring)
• The 2007 report on the findings of the International Coastal Cleanup found that a third of marine debris was smoking-related. (See: International Coastal Cleanup Report 2007, Ocean Conservancy.)