Environment Minister Rebecca Pow (UK) has warned the tobacco industry to “step up” and play its part in tackling cigarette butt litter or the government will consider legislating to force the industry to tackle the issue. Speaking at the Tidy Britain All-Party Parliamentary Group last week (8 July), the MP for Taunton Deane who holds the resources and waste brief at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) expressed her “frustration” at the tobacco industry’s lack of action on tackling cigarette litter.
Pow urged the industry to act on its commitments made to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee in 2015, which called for any additional revenue generated by raising tobacco levies to go to funding the clean-up of cigarette litter, or the government would force the industry to act.
Forcing the tobacco industry to take responsibility for the litter produced by cigarettes is an issue that has been raised before, with the Environmental Services Association estimating the councils could save around £140 million every year if tobacco companies were made to cover the costs of cleaning up such litter. The EU’s Single Use Plastic Directive will mandate this across the EU, but this will not be applicable in the UK at the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020 unless the UK legislates for it separately. Cigarette butt litter is estimated to make up 79 per cent of the litter local authorities clean up every single year, and has been the subject of multiple public campaigns, including by campaign group Keep Britain Tidy.
Source: Resource
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