Preventing cigarette litter

“Cigarette litter is England’s most common type of litter, being present on 79% of streets. Littered cigarette butts are harmful to the environment, they are time consuming and costly to clean-up and they do not look good.”

This information comes from ENCAMS – the organisation that runs the “Keep Britain Tidy” campaign. In the joint ENCAMS / DEFRA publication “Preventing Cigarette Litter in England - Guidelines for Local Authorities” (available as a PDF download).

Research carried out by ENCAMS has shown that smokers are very fearful of setting general litter bins alight and prefer a dedicated cigarette bin to dispose of their butts.

Their preference is for a dedicated cigarette bin:

• Large enough to hold a high volume of cigarette ends;
• Easy and clean to use, with large holes to insert the butt end; and
• Clear signage that indicates it is for butt ends.

While it would be impossible to place ashtrays everywhere, you can help to maximise the use of new (and old) ashtrays by choosing the right type of ashtray to suit your context. The placement, design and visibility of your ashtray can all influence whether it is used or not.

Here are some suggestions for choosing the right type of ashtray in common litter hotspots:

Transition points
(e.g. transport interchanges, office/warehouse entrances and pub/hotel entrances) – Wall mounted ashtrays are useful at transition points such as the entrance to buildings and dedicated smoking areas. Consider the height of your installation if ashtrays are wall or post mounted. Portable freestanding ashtrays are a good choice for some buildings/designated smoking areas where a permanent ashtray cannot be installed (sometimes this is the case if a building is heritage listed – see the Planning permission section on page 7 for more information). Free standing ashtrays that are low to the ground (such as buckets) are not ideal as many smokers will attempt and fail to throw their cigarette end in the receptacle, meaning that a greater proportion end up being littered around the base of the ashtray.

Pedestrian areas
(e.g. open-air shopping malls) – Post mounted ashtrays are useful in areas of high footfall, such as open-air pedestrian shopping malls. Adding an ashtray or a stubber plate to a public place litter bin can be useful because they are already identified by the community as disposal areas for other types of litter, though do consider the research that shows smokers prefer dedicated bins. However, try to ensure that the ashtray/stubber plate is highly recognisable so that the ashtray is not filled with other types of litter. Also, a recognisable stubber plate with a large surface area will dissuade smokers from stubbing out (and therefore staining) the casing of the litter bin.

Much of the information on this page has been reproduced from the DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) publication "Preventing Cigarette Litter in England", which is here available as a PDF download. This Publication © Crown copyright 2007. This information is also available from the DEFRA web site.