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UN Treaty Should Ban Cigarette Filters – International Well being and Environmental Teams Urge Motion
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – AUGUST 5, 2025 – Beginning at present, governments from all over the world are assembly in Geneva for the ultimate spherical of negotiations (INC5.2) for a brand new worldwide treaty to deal with plastic air pollution. Among the many sources of plastic air pollution beneath dialogue, cigarette butts are a serious however usually missed and really poisonous contributor. ASH joins AT Schweiz (Swiss Affiliation for Tobacco Management), Stop2Drop, Cease Tobacco Air pollution Alliance, and different civil society organizations in calling for a worldwide ban on cigarette filters.
“Failure to ban the world’s most pervasive type of plastic air pollution, which is connected to the world’s deadliest shopper product, would sign that the Negotiating Committee just isn’t severe about reaching its mandate,” mentioned ASH Govt Director Laurent Huber who’s attending INC5.2 this week.
The world is negotiating – cigarette filters should not be forgotten.
As international locations collect on the United Nations in Geneva from August 5-14, 2025, to finalize the worldwide plastics treaty, plastic cigarette filters have to be explicitly addressed. A failure to incorporate cigarette filters would depart one of the pervasive single-use plastics untouched.
Yearly, an estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered all over the world. Regardless of their small measurement, these filters have an enormous environmental footprint. They’re fabricated from cellulose acetate, a plastic that breaks down slowly into dangerous microplastics. Cigarette butts additionally comprise over 7,000 chemical compounds—together with nicotine and poisonous heavy metals—that may leach into soil and waterways, harming ecosystems and wildlife.
Systematic deception: Why cigarette filters are dangerous to well being
Cigarette filters have been launched by the tobacco {industry} within the Fifties to ease public fears about lung most cancers. Nonetheless, they aren’t solely ineffective at defending well being—in addition they trigger environmental hurt. Specialists warn that cigarette filters create a false sense of safety. They encourage deeper inhalation and improve the absorption of poisonous substances into the lungs.
Aligning with the WHO Framework Conference on Tobacco Management (FCTC)
Any world plastics treaty have to be aligned with the WHO Framework Conference on Tobacco Management (FCTC), which explicitly requires motion on the environmental harms of tobacco merchandise and safety from tobacco {industry} interference. Cigarette filters shouldn’t merely be handled as waste—these are tobacco product parts with confirmed environmental and well being dangers.
Policymakers should act – Three key calls for
ASH joins AT Schweiz (Swiss Affiliation for Tobacco Management), Stop2Drop, Cease Tobacco Air pollution Alliance, and extra civil society organizations in calling for robust commitments at INC-5.2, together with:
1. Polluter pays precept: Tobacco producers have to be held financially accountable for filter air pollution.
2. No greenwashing: The plastics treaty ought to embrace an specific reference to the WHO FCTC, reject any tobacco {industry} affect, and guarantee constant alignment between environmental and public well being insurance policies.
3. Impartial public consciousness and enforcement: Governments should launch tobacco industry-free public consciousness campaigns on tobacco product waste.
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ACTION ON SMOKING AND HEALTH
Based in 1967, Motion on Smoking and Well being (ASH) is America’s oldest anti-tobacco group, devoted to a world with ZERO tobacco deaths. As a result of tobacco is the main reason for preventable dying worldwide, ASH helps daring options proportionate to the magnitude of the issue.
Key Sources
Briefing Paper for INC 5.2, Cease Tobacco Air pollution Alliance: (14 July 2025)
Collection of articles: Plastic and tobacco, AT Switzerland (2024): https://www.at-schweiz.ch/de/wissen/nachhaltigkeit/plastik-tabak/.
The Swiss Affiliation for Tobacco Management has taken benefit of the negotiations on a global conference aimed toward decreasing plastic air pollution to publish a collection of six articles on the theme of “Plastic and tobacco…”
Haein Choi, Jari Hanhimaki, Hanna Pacht (2025): The Hidden Plastic Disaster of Tobaccos. Can One Smoke With out Polluting? https://www.at-schweiz.ch/paperwork/1099/AT_Research_Series_No._8_The_Hidden_Plastic_Crisis_June2025.pdf.
In line with the WHO, between 340 and 680 million kilograms of cigarette butts find yourself within the atmosphere worldwide every year. (“Tobacco and its environmental impression: an outline,“ WHO, 2017).
Cigarette butts comprise greater than 7,000 chemical compounds, together with heavy metals and nicotine. (“Tobacco and its environmental impression: an outline”, WHO, 2017).
Cigarette filters are a advertising ploy relationship again to the Fifties. (“The ‘filter fraud’ persists: the tobacco {industry} continues to be utilizing filters to counsel decrease well being dangers whereas destroying the atmosphere,” Evans-Reeves, Lauber, Hiscock, 2021).
Hyperlink to the marketing campaign web site, “Ban all cigarette filters, not simply plastic ones”: https://ban-all-filters-5zoo0x5.gamma.web site/.
