Tobacco companies now have to pay to clean up cigarette butts in Spain. Some want Canada to go further
Head of Physicians for A Smoke-Free Canada wants a ban on filters
Tobacco companies will now have to foot the bill to clean up discarded cigarette butts in Spain, after new regulations came into effect Friday.
The move follows an agreement signed by the European Union in 2019 to ban single-use plastics by 2021.
Now advocates in Canada are hoping to see similar legislation, especially in the wake of the country's own legislation prohibiting some single-use plastics, which went into effect in December.
Cigarette butt waste "is toxic, it is plastic and it is pollution," says Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for A Smoke-Free Canada, an organization that aims to reduce smoking.
Most cigarette filters, which are designed to absorb some of the toxins from the tobacco, are made from cellulose acetate, a type of plastic that takes years to break down.
According to the World Health Organization, 4.5 trillion cigarettes pollute oceans, rivers and sidewalks worldwide every year. In Canada, an estimated 8,000 tonnes of cigarette butts end up as litter each year.
The Current host Matt Galloway spoke with Callard about why cigarette butts are such a problem and why she thinks Spain's legislation doesn't go far enough.
How big of a problem is this here in Canada?
Well, the groups that have done shoreline cleanups and the municipalities that have done litter audits have identified cigarettes, generally speaking, as a leading or among the leading sources of litter… It is as big a problem in Canada as it is in any other country where … smoking is pervasive, which is to say, around the world.
And so what do you make of the new measures that are taking effect in Spain today, where the tobacco companies themselves will pay for the cost of the clean up of cigarette butts that are discarded?
That is a major step, but it won't actually remove the pollution. It will perhaps reduce the burden of the clean up costs. But the problem with cigarette butts is that they're very difficult to clean everywhere. It's not like tires where you can easily see them and go and pick them up. They get swept into the storm sewers, they get thrown into rivers. The costs of cleaning them up properly are extraordinary, but it's also just very difficult. It's not really feasible to collect them all. That's why we think a better solution would be just to get rid of cigarette filters altogether.
What have we done here in this country, if anything, to try to deal with the pollution caused by cigarette butts?
Well, I'd say that the issue is pending in Canada. Canada, like the European Union, is at the forefront of countries which are bringing in plastic restrictions. The plastic regulations came into effect just this last summer, and they ban a small number of single-use plastics like stir sticks, etc. Those measures are just starting to come into effect.
When the government published those regulations, they acknowledged that cigarette filters were an issue, and that they would be continuing to explore what to do with them. So we are hopeful that when Canada looks at them, they will look at the European Union experience and say, well, that's a necessary step, but it's not sufficient to actually address the problem and it's not the optimal solution.
But one way or another, it's important that this issue be dealt with. And it's kind of surprising in some ways that it's taken so long to take action against plastic waste generally, but also to understand the unique characteristics of the cigarette filter — that it's not just plastic, but it's also poison plastic.
People have called this the last acceptable form of littering…. Why do you think it is that that is still seen in some quarters as "acceptable?"
Well, I think it's deeply embedded in our culture. The flick of the cigarette butts almost become a kind of body language even to mark the end of a sentence or to stress a point.
And that cultural embedment comes from — we didn't just inherit it — it comes from movies … it comes from books, it comes from all sorts of ways in which the cigarette was used and promoted as being an iconic part of Western culture. And so littering kind of got adopted and put in with that. Changing people's understanding of cigarette litter is certainly an important component of dealing with the problem.
As the executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, is the answer ultimately to get people to stop smoking cigarettes?
I think that's part of the answer, and that the other part of the answer is to get tobacco companies to stop selling them.
And in the meantime, you want them to have to pay for the cleanup if they're still going to sell this product, have to clean up the waste of the product?
I think if the government decides that we need to continue to have cigarettes on the market, they can say that the cigarettes should not be filtered.
Produced by Enza Uda. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.