Being shipped to the United States to be recycled into street furniture, shipping pallets and ashtrays is the fate of hundreds of thousands of cigarette butts collected by the city council of the Victorian state capital, Melbourne.
City of Melbourne councillor and environment portfolio chair Dr Cathy Oke said the council, one of only two in Australia to recycle the butts, had partnered with a recycling company for the scheme.
“Currently the recycling is being done in the US because there’s not enough cigarette butts being collected in the appropriate or the proper way,” she told ABC Radio Melbourne.
Studies have shown that of the four disposal routes, recycling, litter, landfill, and incineration, recycling the cigarette butts had the lowest global warming impact.
Dr Oke said Melbourne smokers put nine million cigarette butts into landfill each year.
The council is calling on smokers to support the recycling scheme by butting out in one of the 367 “enviro poles” around the city so the butts can be collected.
“We’re encouraging smokers to not put their cigarette butts in the general bin, or certainly not on the ground,” Dr Oke said.
“Cigarette butts are the most littered item in Australia.
“Butts are commonly mistaken for food by marine life and have been found in the stomachs of fish, birds, sea turtles and other marine creatures.”
She said cigarette butts contained plastic and were not biodegradable.
“We do have thousands of cigarette butts on the ground each week.
“The number one thing we want is to get them out of the food chain for our aquatic animals, so out of our waterways.
“So many cigarette butts are still seen on our beaches and by our rivers and they end up in the water, so it’s not good.”
Dr Oke said if enough smokers used the enviro poles, “we can encourage an industry here to recycle the cigarette butts”.
“Hopefully more councils will get on board and the demand will be there, and then of course we can do it in Australia.”
However, her preference was for people to stop smoking altogether.
Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said in a statement; “We collect more than 200,000 cigarette butts each week from 367 cigarette butt bins across the city: litter that may otherwise end up being washed down drains and into the Yarra River.”
The City of Melbourne has partnered with Enviropoles, who collect the cigarette waste, and TerraCycle, who convert the butts into plastic products.
The project is funded through the Victorian Government’s Litter Hotspots program.
One Response
Introduce a + $500 fine for throwing a cigarette but in the street. Make all cigarettes carry a but out bag with every packet. Also enforce the fine .