Smoking and Cigarette Butts

Our business lives in a tiny heritage cottage in the inner city of Brisbane. Half our staff are smokers and take regular breaks to go outside and puff out their frustrations.

Smoking is their personal choice and as we all know there are rules to minimise the affect of passive smoke on the general public so our smokers go outside into the garden for their breaks. They have their own personal sealed glass jars where they are responsible to dispose their cigarette butts in a sealed glass jar and place in a bin.

Cigarette butts are not biodegradable.
The acetate (plastic) filters can take many years to decompose.

Some of the environmental impacts of cigarette butts:

When it rains, cigarette butts lying in our streets and gutters are carried via stormwater directly into our harbours, beaches and rivers.
The chemicals contained in these butts and the butts themselves impact on our water quality and can be deadly to marine life.
Flicked butts can cause fires.
When thrown from a motor vehicle into dried grass, butts can start a grassfire or even a bushfire.
Cigarette butts can take up to 12 months to break down in freshwater and up to 5 uears to break down in seawater.
Littered butts seriously reduce the aesthetic quality of any environment.
Butts have been found in the stomachs of young birds, sea turtles and other marine creatures.

So if you are a smoker, please consider all of these consequences and dispose of your butts responsibily.