Camden Primary Care Trust NHS

That includes us! Camden spent over £10 million last year 1 keeping the borough’s streets clean, and on average in the UK, cigarette litter accounts for over 40% of all street litter.2

So we can estimate that smoking-related rubbish costs Camden council a large proportion of this. Camden has even had dedicated campaigns such as ‘Butt Patrols’ to tackle the problems created by smoking related litter. 3 This cost is then passed back to us as taxpayers through the council tax we pay.

Camden would be cleaner and cheaper if we all stopped smoking. Cigarette butts, followed by sweet wrappers and matchsticks, are the most commonly found items of litter. An estimated 122 tonnes of cigarette butts, matchsticks and cigarette-related litter is dropped everyday across the UK. 4 A 2007 survey carried out by independent environment charity ENCAMS revealed that 23% of smokers admitted to dropping their cigarette butts on the ground and that the majority (76%) of the public feel that discarded cigarette ends are a problem.

It has been estimated that if every smoker dropped one cigarette end a week we would be knee deep in 624 million cigarette ends within a year 5 and in London, 2,700 tonnes of cigarette litter is dropped on London streets each year 6   which is the equivalent of 6,750 million cigarette ends. It has been estimated that worldwide, in 2004, over 5.5 trillion cigarettes were produced. However, this figure will rise to 9 trillion, or an increase of almost two thirds (63%), cigarette butts produced by 2025 due to the increase in world population and more people in poorer countries starting to smoke. 7

1. 1. Street Environment Services, London Borough of Camden, 2008
2. 2. www.buttsout.co.uk
3. 3. Street Environment Services, London Borough of Camden, 2008
4. 4. Street Environment Services, London Borough of Camden, 2008
5. 5. Cigarette Litter Fact File. ENCAMS. 2005
6. 6. www.london.gov.uk
7. 7. www.rmit.com.au