Media Release: 27 August 2009
If you dropped a cigarette butt in the Queen Street mall back in 1994, is it possible that it could be still been
sitting on a beach on Stradbroke Island after all of these years?
Cigarette butts are small, but made of from a type of plastic they can take from 2 months to 15 years to
break down and they’re hanging around creating a big problem, as Keep Australia Beautiful Week reminds
us year: Waste Lives On.
“Estimates of the time it takes cigarette butts to break down vary wildly depending on their exposure the
elements,” explains Wendy Jones, Executive Director of the Butt Littering Trust.
“We have sources that estimate one end of the spectrum is at 2 months when butts are exposed to air while
at the other end, estimates range from 1- 3 years and upwards when the butts are exposed to water,
depending on whether it’s fresh or salt water or even up to 15 years in other circumstances.” Jones said.
Whether it’s months or years, not only do butts hang around but they get around. In coastal cities such as
Brisbane, an estimated 1 in 10 butt littered on streets end up in nearby waterways affecting water quality
and wildlife health and habitat. Cigarette butts have been found in the guts of turtles, birds, fish and other
marine creatures.
To help address this problem, the Butt Free Brisbane campaign is being held on Thursday 27 August during
Keep Australia Beautiful Week, asking commuters and other city visitors to “PLEASE BUTT IT, THEN BIN
IT®”.
Transport interchanges and shopping malls have been highlighted as Brisbane’s butt littering hotspots and
will be the focus of campaign educating smokers about the impact of littering and adding permanent butt
bins at Central and Roma Street Stations and throughout the Queen Street Mall.
Butt Free Educators will be at stations and in the Mall on Thursday handing out free pocket ashtray and
helping people understand the impacts of dropping their butt and asking for their pledge to butt it, then bin it.
“You could be forgiven for thinking that cigarette butt filters are made of cotton” said Laura Willmott,
Marketing Director, Keep Australia Beautiful Queensland. “They’re light, break up into a fluffy ball and are
roughly the same colour.
They’re in fact made from cellulose acetate, a type of plastic, produced into fine filaments designed to catch
some of the particulate matter within inhaled smoke.
They are small but they live on - the Keep Australia Beautiful National Litter Index consistently rates
cigarette butts as the most littered item accounting for around 50% of waste by number. This has been
estimated at around 7 billion butts littered in Australia every year,” Willmott said.
Butt Free Brisbane is a partnership between Keep Australia Beautiful Queensland, Brisbane City Council,
Queensland Rail and the Butt Littering Trust.
Keep Australia Beautiful Week, 24 – 30 August, www.kab.org.au
Contact: Laura Willmott – Marketing Director Keep Australia Beautiful, Queensland - 0427 763 245
Wendy Jones – Executive Director – Butt Littering Trust - 0418 172 400
