Lismore mayor Jenny Dowell and Lismore City Council staff have signed up for the first National Butt Free Day next Thursday, October 18, to spread the word about the dangers of butts being tossed away and to promote easy solutions.
Lismore City Council has 25 butt bins in the CBD and seven at Lismore Shopping Square, plus smokers can pick up portable butt bins at Council’s Goonellabah and CBD offices to carry with them for convenience.
‘Butts make our city look untidy and they damage our environment. They don’t disintegrate so they wash into our river through stormwater drains. If you’re a smoker and can’t give up for your own health, think about our river’s health and bin your butt,’ says mayor Dowell.
Cigarette butts are in fact Australia’s most littered item, consistently recorded by Keep Australia Beautiful as being around 50 per cent of the total number of items littered nationally every year.
The size of cigarette butts compared to larger litter items belies the impact of this widespread problem. Butt littering impacts include waterways pollution, degradation of wildlife habitat and health (turtles can swallow them!), substantial yet largely avoidable daily costs in cleaning up, and various other social, environmental and economic impacts.
