On Monday, City of Melbourne placed a perspex box filled with 200,000 cigarette butts in Queensbridge Square on the south bank of the Yarra River.
The display aims to promote the City of Melbourne’s long-term cigarette butt recycling scheme and to encourage Melburnians to butt out responsibly.
City of Melbourne councillor and Environment portfolio Chair Cathy Oke said in a media release on Monday that more than 360 smart bins have been installed in the CBD following a successful trial of 17 bins last year.
Melbourne Water confirmed that cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item in Melbourne.
Cigarette butts can take up to 12 months to break down in water, and a single cigarette can contaminate eight litres of water.
“We collect around nine million butts in our litter bins every year. We hope this project will motivate smokers to place their cigarette butts in one of the butt bins located around the CBD,” she said in the statement.
The City of Melbourne is one of only two councils in Australia running the scheme, which involves collecting and shipping cigarette butts to the U.S. for recycling.
Similar initiatives have been successfully implemented in Vancouver and New Orleans.
Cr Oke told ABC Radio Melbourne on Tuesday the City had partnered with American recycling company TerraCycle for the initiative.
“Currently [the recycling] is being done in the US … because there’s not enough cigarette butts being collected in the appropriate or the proper way,” said Cr Oke.
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Studies have found that recycling cigarette butts, which contain 60 known carcinogens, has a lower global warming impact than disposing of them as litter, in landfills or via incineration.
Just one week ago, the Coolaroo recycling plant in Melbourne’s north caught fire, forcing more than 100 residents to evacuate the area.
Grant Musgrove, the CEO of the Australian Council of Recycling, has said the state of Victoria lacks a cohesive strategy across the Environmental Protection Authority, the Department of Environment, Land and Water and Planning, and Sustainability Victoria.
(Photo: Sophie Heizer)
