How expensive is cigarette butt waste clean-up?
Cleaning up cigarette butt litter is extremely costly. The average annual cost of cigarette waste clean-up for a city, estimated from the total costs of public litter clean-up, typically ranges from 1 to 5 million dollars, with cigarette butts making up a significant portion of that cost. In the case of highly populated cities, the costs can range as high as 4.7 to 90 million dollars. For instance, San Francisco spends an estimated 11 million dollars on cleaning up cigarette butts every year.
Cleanup efforts can cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars each year. These expenses cover street sweeping, storm drain maintenance, manual pickup from sidewalks, parks, parking lots, and playgrounds, and beach cleanups to prevent toxic cigarette waste from polluting the environment. The financial burden of cigarette litter cleanup ultimately falls on local governments and taxpayers, rather than the tobacco industry responsible for the waste.
Click the following links to learn more:
- Cigarette butt litter: An expensive hazard. (2017). American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation. Retrieved July 11, 2023, from https://no-smoke.org/cigarette-butt-litter-an-expensive-hazard/#:~:text=Economic%20Costs&text=A%20study%20published%20in%20the,for%20major%20cities%20and%20municipalities
- Novotny, T. E., & Slaughter, E. (2014). Tobacco product waste: An environmental approach to reduce tobacco consumption. Current Environmental Health Reports, 1, 208-216.
- Schneider, J. E., Scheibling, C. M., Peterson, N. A., Stigler Granados, P., Fulton, L., & Novotny, T. E. (2020). Online simulation model to estimate the total costs of tobacco product waste in large US cities. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(13), 4705.