Plastic Free Axminster has been carrying out a ‘slow-burn’ campaign to raise awareness in the community about the dangers of cigarette littering. We have been talking to retailers, hospitality outlets and businesses in the town about this and encouraging them to display our posters, to make customers, clients and staff more aware of the dangers of cigarette littering.
Approximately six trillion (yes that’s 6,000,000,000,000) cigarettes are purchased each year around the world and, of these, around four trillion cigarette butts are tossed away to pollute the planet annually!
Cigarette butts are the most littered item on the Earth, blown by the wind, washed into our drains by the rain, escaping into the waterways and then our oceans, breaking down into microplastics, which eventually find their way into the food chain. Did you know that, apart from plastic, cigarette butts contain arsenic, nicotine, lead and a vast amount of other chemicals?
Smokers feel they are being tidy by discarding them in the public drains and are genuinely unaware that these eventually make their way into our rivers and oceans to be eaten by marine life and birds who mistake them for food. Those cigarette ends which are left on the ground, or thrown into the hedges, are equally polluting, as they, too, break down into microplastics. A scientific study by the Anglia Ruskin University in 2019 found that cigarette butts in the soil affect the growth of some plants, restricting it by a third.
So we would like to encourage those who smoke to, perhaps, invest in a pocket ashtray (also called a ‘mini bin’) to keep in a handbag or a pocket – after all, if a sizeable smart phone can be wedged in a pocket, then fitting in one of these would be a cinch. Alternatively, why not buy one as a present for someone who smokes? A nice stocking-filler – in fact, buy one now; why wait for Christmas?
For more tips and information, see https://plasticfreeaxminster.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook.
