The tobacco industry will have to start paying due to the pollution generated by cigarette butts that flood streets, beaches, shopping centers, bus stations and soils in general. Specifically, they must finance the cleanup of cigarette remains in the environment, including sanitation and purification infrastructure; and take responsibility for the collection and treatment of cigarette butts in cities, even though the final management is done by public collection systems.
This is contemplated in the royal decree approved this Tuesday by the Council of Ministers at the proposal of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition on the management of this tobacco waste. Every year, about 2,000 million packs of cigarettes and about 7,500 million filters for rolling tobacco are sold in Spain. Many end up on the ground, which is why cigarette butts have become the waste most collected on beaches and estimates suggest that, globally, 40% end up in the sea.
Furthermore, they are not harmless. Tobacco filters are made of cellulose acetate, a plastic type which when not treated properly ends up fragmented into microparticles. Added to this are the toxic substances from tobacco such as nicotine, arsenic, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals.
The royal decree imposes a series of measures on the tobacco industry, the first the ID. From now on, producers of cigarettes and tobacco filters must register in the Registry of Product Producers, as the plastic and food packaging industry already does, and issue information on their activity every year.
Your obligation will be to finance treatment and collection of waste, both when it is dispersed in the environment and when it is managed in cities by public systems. It must also be responsible for collecting information, carrying out studies and undertaking awareness-raising measures for the general population.
Finally, large companies in the tobacco industry must try to make improvements in the design of their products to reduce plastic content and its abandonment in the environment from 2030.
This same Tuesday, the tobacco industry announced that it will create a platform called Ávora from which “the costs associated with the cleaning, transportation and treatment of waste” will be assumed, as well as carrying out awareness campaigns to combat the dispersion of garbage, the association has highlighted. In this way, it assumes the obligations imposed by the new royal decree.
Critical points
The royal decree also contemplates that both city councils and private companies must identify the places where this waste is concentrated (such as bus stops, metro exits, hospital environments…). City councils will also be obliged to offer a specific collection system for cigarettes in all these areas in five years.
The royal decree also reinforces the power of the town councils to ban smoking on beaches and fine based on it, although this point was already contemplated in the current waste law.
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