The biggest plastic waste nobody is talking about

The most commonly found litter in the world? Not a plastic bag, not a straw, but the cigarette butt. In the Netherlands alone, around 1 billion filters end up in the environment every year, where they leak nicotine, heavy metals and microplastics. This ends up in the soil and groundwater, and we cannot clean our way out of it.

The filter does not make smoking a single bit healthier, contrary to what many smokers have been led to believe. It is a piece of plastic that does only one thing: pollute our living environment. While the responsibility should lie with the tobacco industry, the costs currently fall on society. 

Plastic straws, cotton buds and cutlery are already banned in Europe. Why not the cigarette filter? Our No (Plastic) Filter campaign calls on the Dutch government, politicians in Brussels and policymakers at the UN to take the logical next step: add cigarette filters to the list of banned single-use plastics. This massive problem must be tackled at the source.

With No (Plastic) Filter, Fair Resource Foundation connects policymakers, municipalities, litter activists and citizens who are also concerned about pollution from cigarette filters. Together, we are taking action against this persistent problem and demanding a simple solution: a European ban on the filter.