Cigarette butts are the most common form of litter on the planet and the problem is getting worse. We have to turn the tide. We have to find ways to stem the flow. Ignore the problem and it will only get worse. Much worse.


Cigarette butts are the most common form of litter on the planet. You are never more than a few paces away from a handful of discarded butts. Trillions are dropped every single year in our cities, towns, villages and countryside. Wherever you find people you will find cigarette butts. Lots of them.

Broken Window Theory suggests that if an area is seen to be covered in litter then this will highly likely lead to more littering. This is especially true for cigarette butts. If smokers see an area is covered in discarded cigarette butts – outside entrances to buildings, by seating areas, at pedestrian crossings, car parks etc. – then they are more likely to throw their cigarette butts on the ground too. This issue increases when there is no clear bin provided and ineffective signage is used.

If there is also seen to be a lack of enforcement in an area (dropping cigarette butts is a littering offence and can lead to fines of £80 or more) then smokers feel there will be no consequences for dropping their cigarette butts. They’ll get away with it.

We need to find a way to nudge smokers to do the right thing.

Our Charity Cigarette Butt Bins do just that. They incentivise the smoker to do the right thing.


Cigarette filters are made from a form of plastic called cellulose acetate. It is suggested that there are 4.5 trillion cigarette butts dropped in the environment every single year. This is a hard figure to verify but it’s safe to say that the figure is in the trillions.

That’s a staggering amount and a difficult number to visualise. Consider this… that’s way more stars than there are in our galaxy and if you were to lay every cigarette butt dropped in a year end to end they would stretch to the moon and back more than 150 times!

Now consider that a cigarette butt can take 10 years or more to break down. That means that there are likely 30+ trillion cigarette butts in the environment right this second. All potentially breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces.

Polluting our rivers and oceans. Killing wildlife and vegetation. Entering the food chain and therefore impacting the health of smokers and non smokers alike.


Our Charity Cigarette Butt Bins offer a solution to help combat this problem. 

By incentivising smokers to do the right thing we can also prevent millions of cigarette butts from polluting the environment.

Did you know that cigarette butts can be recycled…in theory?

In theory cigarette butts can be recycled but it isn’t quite as simple as that at the moment. There is currently no local infrastructure to recycle cigarette waste. A recycling company called TerraCycle used to offer two solutions to recycle cigarette waste.















Cigarette butts are not only made of plastic, they are also filled with toxic chemicals. Over 5,000 of them. 50+ have been proven to be carcinogenic to humans and many more are deadly to wildlife.

It’s suggested that the chemicals found in just one cigarette butt can leach out and contaminate approximately 7.5 litres of water within one hour. This contaminated water is lethal to aquatic life.

By encouraging smokers to use our Charity Cigarette Butt Bins we are reducing the number of cigarette butts finding their way into our drains, rivers and oceans.


It’s notoriously difficult to change people’s behaviour by TELLING or FORCING them to do something. It’s far better to nudge them in the right direction.

Our Charity Cigarette Butt Bins do just that.

The incentive of raising money for a local charity by simply using the bin provided is enough for many smokers to ‘Do the right thing’.

Over time it is hoped that smokers will subconsciously associate putting their cigarette butt in a bin (not just a Charity Cigarette Butt Bin but any bin) as a good thing.



Smoking increases your risk of developing more than 50 serious health conditions. Some may be fatal, and others can cause irreversible long-term damage to your health.

Treating smoking related illnesses also has a massive impact on the NHS costing billions every single year.

We need to offer advice on how to quit smoking wherever we can to help reduce the impact on public health.

Every Charity Cigarette Butt Bin has links to quit smoking advice clearly highlighted on every front panel.


Installing our Charity Cigarette Butt Bins as part of your anti-littering strategy is an ideal way of involving businesses and charities with the local community.

Businesses can show their commitment to their employees, the local community and the environment by installing Charity Cigarette Butt Bins on their premises or by sponsoring a bin in the community.

Charities and other community groups can encourage the adoption of Charity Cigarette Butt Bins, find sponsors and help spread the anti-littering message.

All of these activities also offer countless opportunities to share positive messaging in the media and online.

Great for business. Great for charities. Great for the community. Great for the environment.