Cigarette litter facts
Cigarette ends are difficult to clean up, as the small filters
fall into grates and cracks in the pavement, avoiding detection by
normal cleaning processes. The filters are also made of a plastic
that can take a long time to break down and be absorbed back into
the environment. Here are some other facts:
- 120 tonnes of cigarette litter is dropped in the UK every
day.
- In the UK, cigarette butts account for around 40 per cent of
litter, in the rest of the world, they account for around 50 per
cent of all litter.
- A cigarette butt contains up to 4,000 chemicals including
hydrogen, cyanide and arsenic.
- Cigarette filters can take up to 12 years to degrade.
- It takes one second to drop a cigarette butt. If it took the
same time to pick it up again, it would take one person (working
eight hours a day) nearly 20 years to collect the estimated 200
million cigarette butts that are thrown away in the UK each
day.