the impact

Cigarette butts are one of the most littered items in Australia.

• It is estimated that seven billion cigarette butts are littered annually in Australia (about one third of all cigarettes smoked).
• This equates to more than 5,000 tonnes of cigarette butt waste littered in Australia each year.
• Melbourne Water has found that cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item in Melbourne’s creeks, rivers and bays and estimate that 350,000 cigarette butts enter Port Phillip Bay every day.
• In NSW, cigarette butts make up half of all litter. Cigarette butts take 5-12 years to break down.

Cigarette litter is a growing global issue

• Worldwide, cigarette butts are the most common type of litter.
  
• The World Watch Institute estimates that in 2004 over 5.5 trillion cigarettes were produced in the world.
  
• This figure will rise to 9 trillion (63% more) cigarette butts produced per year by 2025, mainly due to the increase in the world population.
  
• On average, it is estimated that about 50% of cigarette butts are littered.
  
• This is equivalent to an estimated 2.75 trillion cigarette butts or 2 million tonnes of cigarette butt waste per year.

Cigarette litter is toxic

• Using a conservative value of only 5 milligrams of toxic to highly toxic chemicals contained in each butt we are adding over 75,000 kilograms of toxic waste to the environment each day (and this is just the toxins contained in the butts, not the butts themselves).
  
• Preliminary studies have found that toxic chemicals leached from cigarette butts present a biohazard to freshwater microorganisms.
  
• 1 cigarette butt can contaminate 8 litres of water.
  
• Leachate from the remnant tobacco portion of cigarette butts has been found to be deadly at even smaller concentrations.