Legislation passing the Butt

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will reach the report stage in the House of Lords on 24th February.  Every day, an estimated 3 million cigarette filters are littered in the UK. This means that since the first reading of the Bill in parliament on the 20th March 2024, approximately 1.8 billion cigarette filters have been dropped onto UK streets and into waterways.

With this bill the UK government could reduce plastic pollution and improve public health by answering the call from researchers and public health experts to ban cigarette filters. So why haven’t they done it?

Researchers in the UK from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School have recently followed the World Health Organisation and the EU call for a ban on cigarette filters as an urgent public health matter.

Because of historic advertising from the tobacco industry, cigarette filters are widely perceived to reduce the harmful effects of cigarette smoke on the body. However, research has indicated that cigarette filters do not provide meaningful protection and may even contribute to increased exposure of smokers to harmful substances. Also, banning cigarette filters may encourage people to stop smoking by dispelling the illusion of safety provided by the filter.

When local authorities around the UK are spending an estimated total of £40 million a year cleaning up discarded cigarette filters that pollute the environment with microplastics and toxins, a total ban on filters seems the obvious solution.

However, the Government, unlike the Greens and Lib Dems, has voted against including this ban in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. The legal sale of tobacco in the UK will now slowly end over the course of the next century - at the cost of 3 million butts a day - and any potential ban has been left to DEFRA.

Rather than waiting for this to happen, the government could summon up the courage to confront the tobacco lobby and decisively end this huge source of microplastic pollution in UK waterways.

You can take further action by writing to individual members of the House of Lords, lobbying your MP or giving advance support to  No Butts Day (4th July 2026).

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For more information contact: info@scarabtrust.org.uk

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cigarette butt ground - Image by wirestock  on Freepik (ST ref: 1229)